Structure of an Item

CurrentRMS calls things we track a Product. Everything that shows up on a rental or sale is a product. CurrentRMS stores a lot of information about the various products we rent: name, image, rental price, vendor, purchase cost, etc...

Some items are simple (like a grip head) and others are more complicated (An HMI List with a ballast, header cable, head, globe, barndoor, scrim kit, etc...). This article explains how we should structure an item in the inventory.

What do we use Products For?

Products are mainly used to track the items we have for rent. That represent the bulk of their use.

However, because a product record contains the Manufacturer, Vendor, Cost, and other fields, we also use products as a repository for things we are likely to need to reorder for the business, so that we have a handy location to go to for re-ordering items without having to track down an invoice or a bunch of emails. So examples of items: T-Knob to stands, grub nuts for various piece of grip gear, Bates Paddles, Bins we use to store things (we standardized on 4 sizes & colors), labels for barcodes, etc...

These items are put in 2 categories: X - Raw Materials (used to fix/build equipment) and Y - Office Supplies (to run the business - bins, labels, etc...). All items in these categories should have an Inventory Method of None as we don't track their number.

Type of Product

Something we rent can have one of 3 types: Item, Complete or Kit

An Item is an individual piece of gear complete by itself: A C-Stand Arm, a Grip Head, a baby plate, etc...

A Complete is something we rent that has a number of components that make up the entire item. The key thing is that a Complete identifies the Main item being rented. Two examples: a 40" NSL C-Stand is a complete. The C-Stand is the main item, but it also comes with a 40" C-Stand Arm and a 2.5" Grip Head. A more intricate example: A Litemat 4 consists of The LiteMat 4 head (this is the main item), a head cable, a controller, a power supply, louvers, travel bag, various diffs, etc...

A Kit is something made up of components where there is NOT a main component. Two examples: A menace arm is composed of 3 items: The bottom, middle and top portion, but none of them individually represents the menace arm.

A Kit can also literally be a kit: We have a DMX connector kit which consists of a container, some 3 to 5 pin converters, some 3 pin to RJ-45 and 5 pin to RJ-45 converters, etc...

Early on, we made some mistakes with Kits: We had a Baby Tripod Kit which had a tripod, spreader and travel case. This is wrong as it is not a Kit. The Tripod is the main item, so we now have the Tripod as the Complete with a spreader and travel case as an accessory.

There are still things that are misclassified as Kits especially with Cameras (goPro Hero Kit, A7S Kit, Red kit) but we might leave those alone for now.

Inventory Method

There are 3 choices when it comes to tracking a product in CurrentRMS.

Serialized assigns an Asset Number to each individual item (currentRMS calls this stock level). For example, every C-Stand has an asset number. Serialized items will have a barcode which can be scanned. Ultimately, the vast majority of our rental inventory should be serialized. This should be the default inventory method.

Bulk represents items that not individually distinguished = Speed Clips are a good example. We keep a count of how many we have in total. These tend to be low-cost items.

None are items where quantities are not tracked. They are used for Kits and for items we don't need to count: raw material (screws, bolts, T-Knobs, grub nuts, etc...) and office supplies (toner cartridge, labels, etc...). Also, None is used for items we sub-rent and don't ever expect to carry in Inventory: M-90 Light, Fisher Dolly, etc... In addition, any expendables we sell are also set to None. For expendables, we maintain inventory in QuickBooks.

Structure of a Complete or Kit

A Complete has the main item as the product (LiteMat 4, ARRI 150W Tungsten Fresnel, C-Stand) and everything else is added as an Accessory. Kits are made up of just accessories with nothing as the main item.

Accessories have the following characteristics:

• Count: How many of the same accessory are there
• Free: If we charge or not for the accessory
• Type: Accessory, Component, Safety Item
• Optionality: Mandatory, Default or Optional

The type of accessory affects if something shows up on a quote or invoice. An Accessory always shows up. A Component typically does not show up on Quotes or Invoices. Safety Items show up.

The optionality represents if the accessory MUST be present (Mandatory) otherwise the resource is not functional. If the accessory should be present in the kit but is not essential to the function, then it should be Default. If the accessory is an option, then is should be set to Optional.

Here is a simple Example: An ARRI 150W Tungsten Fresnel Light. It has the following items:

• 1 ESP 150W Globe - Mandatory Component
• 1 3" Barndoor - Default Component
• 1 3" Scrim Kit (5) - Default Component
• 1 ESP 150W Globe Spare - Default Accessory
• 1 3" Chimera Ring Adaptor - Optional Accessory

On the Invoice, the ARRI Light will show up, but the globe, barndoor and Scrim Kit will not be itemized (components). The Spare globe will show up. The Chimera Ring Adapter will be present only if it's added to the order.

Note that you can have nested accessories. In the example above, the Scrim Kit consists of 1 bag and 5 different scrims as components of the kit.

Typically, we don't charge for components or default accessories, but we do for optional accessories.

Serialized Containers

CurrentRMS has the concept of Serialized Containers. These are really a check-out efficiency measure, where by scanning the container's barcode, we also check-out the entire content of the container. An example is our 17" Monitor, where we have the monitor itself (the main item), a power cord, a base, maybe a Battery plate and a case the monitor and AKS lives in. At checkout, by Scanning the case, we automatically checkout the content of the case too (monitor, power cord, base, battery plate).

Here is a key point: Serialized Containers should only be created with CONTAINERS (pelican cases, tripod case, etc...). Do NOT make a kit or an item a container. This will mess things up.