Availability [with video]

The Availability page is a visual tool for displaying item usage such as bookings and maintenance services.

Availability can be accessed via the Availability button on the Main Menu, the Sales/Hire dropdown menu, or the Double-Bookings tab on a Sales Record.

Checking Availability for Items

There is a difference in how singular and bulk items are displayed. For example bulk items are displayed as a series of numbers in the grid, indicating the quantity available or booked, depending on your settings (see below).

By default, singular items (hire items with a QTY for Hire of 1) are displayed as a bar showing the record that is booking them. When there is an overlap, the highest priority record will be displayed in its entirety, and the others will be overlapped by it (you can set this priority in your settings. Find out more by reading the section "Bar Z-Order" below)

To check the availability of an item over a particular time period, simply narrow the filters to display the item(s) you wish to check onscreen, and observe the grid. If there are any bars visible, or any numbers with a grey or red background, there is a booking in the system for the corresponding item.

For more information, you can click the "QTY for Hire" number on the item line you wish to investigate. This will list all of the bookings against the item, and provide a resulting "available for hire" count. If this is in the positive, you have items remaining. If it is '0' you are perfectly booked out. If it is a negative number, you are overbooked.

Filters and Settings on the Availability Screen

Below are some of the optional settings and filters that you are able to manipulate on the Availability Screen.

Filters

The availability screen allows you to filter your results by:

• Branch (if the branches module is enabled)
• Item Category
• Item Description
• Item Type (optional, enabled/disabled in Availability Preferences (below)
• Item Sub-Category (optional, enabled/disabled in Availability Preferences (below)

To alter these options, simply press the Filters button. To clear all filters, Press the X button next to the filters button.

Display Options

You are able to alter 3 key display options when the filters section is open:

• Qty In / Qty Out
  • This option alters the page to display either the QTY that is available, or the quantity that is currently booked out. This will depend on how you like to view the information.
• Itemised/Grouped
  • This setting only has an effect if you are using Group Codes to group singular identical items together. If this setting is enabled, you will get one line for your group, with a QTY for hire equal to the amount of items in the group. In this way, group codes behave like bulk items for the purposes of the availability screen.
• Include Quotes
  • This setting allows you to include Quotes on the availability screen.
    Be Careful
    Although you can elect to see Quotes on the availability screen, they are not actually 'booked', and the items they represent are still available to be booked by another customer. Use Reservation or Booking to ensure the items are reserved for your customer.

Availability Preferences

Next to the Filters button, there is a COG button that will take you to the availability preferences page.

Here are the settings you can manipulate here:

• Paging Size
  • This setting alters how many items you can see per page on the availability screen. Smaller numbers increase the speed of the results displayed. This setting also impacts the 'Check Availability' in invoice item dropdown search list.
• Show Item Type filter
  • This enables an optional Item Type filter on the availability screen
• Show Sub-Category filter
  • This enables an optional Item Sub-Category filter on the availability screen
• Show Current Location Pin for single hire items
  • This feature enables a "pin" next to the item that will show you a map with a marker for the current location of the item, based on the delivery address specified on the currently on-hire invoice. (does not work with bulk items)
• Show single hire items 'out' as numbers (not bars)
  • This setting makes singular/individual items appear using the same number system that is used for bulk items

Bar Z-Order

This section allows you apply priorities to your record types, to ensure that certain record will show up on top of all others. For example, if there was a booking that conflicted with a maintenance record, one would overlap the other. This section lets you decide which would be overlapped by which.

When you have dragged all of the desired records into the right place, press Save