Asset Intelligence and Management

Asset Intelligence and Management

EZOfficeInventory Blogs Reserve With More Insight And Clarity

Item Reservations in EZOfficeInventory

 

Reservations are now considerably richer and more robust EZOfficeInventory. With support for new workflows and insights, make clash-free and conflict-free reservations by easily resolving potential scheduling clashes. In addition to this, reserve a certain quantity of inventory stock items at a particular location and date.

1. Item Reservation

Reservation via Item’s detail Page: You can reserve an item from its detail page. Click ‘Reserve’ and an overlay will appear.

reserve asset

In the overlay, mention the reservation period and for whom the reservation will take place. You can also add a note to a reservation which can be viewed under the reservations tab.

Reservation Overlay

Add New Users and Locations On Reservation: If you move items between new custodians and locations often, adding that information on the fly can take a fair amount of time.

You can use EZOfficeInventory to add a new User and Location when reserving an item. Simply click ‘Add’ next to Location or Reservation For on the above overlay. Another dialog box will pop up, prompting you to create a new User or Location for that reservation.

This makes it easy to add details when you’re planning equipment movement for the future – especially when you’re dealing with elements that don’t already exist on the system.

You can add new Users and Locations while reserving items in the following ways:

  • Item Reservation (from the Item Details page)
  • Mass Reservation (From the Item Listings page)
  • Cart Reservation (from the Cart Details page)

Note: To add new Locations, the ‘Ask on Checkout’ option must be enabled in Settings Company Settings Locations.

locations setting

Mass Reservation: Multiple items (assets only) can be reserved in one go.

Mass reservation

However, an error message will show up if the items have any conflict with other reservations. Enable conflict-free reservations from Settings Company Settings → Reservations.

enable reservations

Items’ reservation via Cart: You can also add multiple items to a cart and then reserve it. This comes into play if the ‘Cart Module’ is enabled from Settings → Add Ons

cart module

Select relevant items and click ‘Add to Cart’. You can now go the Cart and click ‘Reserve’ to reserve the cart.

add items to carts

Reserved cart items can now be edited on the fly. Items can be removed or added, giving businesses more control over their equipment management. Say you reserved items for a CES exhibition but underestimated the number of VR headgear you’d need. With the latest enhancement, last-minute reservations to a cart are nothing to fret over.

Reservations tab within the Asset Detail Page: While reserving an asset, easily view its availability schedule i.e. other reservations and current checkouts. You can do so by clicking the Reservations tab on the details page.

reservations tab

With this information, one may choose a suitable date for a reservation and avoid conflicts. Notice in the screen below, how the Reservation Tab on the Asset Detail page provides this info in a nifty view.

reservations info

info

You may also take appropriate actions from within this view to schedule a new reservation without any time clashes, as shown in the following screen.

If multiple reservations result in clashes at checkout time, you may override them as an administrator. A staff user can only do so for his/her own reservation (if this asset is visible to this staff user as per company settings). Alternatively, one could choose a different check out date and hence avoid any scheduling conflicts.

Conflict-free reservations

2. Reservation Actions

The top-level reservations page (which can be accessed from the bell icon) has also been enhanced to give you quick access to reservations for all the items and carts (see in the screen below).

reservations page

Moreover, as an Admin, you may review reservations made by all members and take necessary actions.

admin may take actions

You can even take actions on asset reservations directly from the details page. In case an asset is part of a reserved Cart and you want to cancel the reservation, you can do so without cancelling the whole Cart. Go to the asset details page , open the Reservations tab and click on the 3 ellipses below:

This will open a pop up showing the following options:

Click on ‘Cancel Item Reservation’ to remove the reserved asset from the Cart.

As a staff user, you may only review your own reservations and take action on them. A historical record of past reservations is also available under the “Fulfilled Reservations” Tab.

Some reservations may appear in red. This is because the quantity reserved is not available at the time of the new sale at that location. You can find out what other color dates/stock quantity means from the help section on the reservations page.

An admin may edit the quantity and location for a reservation at any time and remedy such situations. (as seen in the screen below).

Edit quantity and location

3. Staying on top of Reservations

Always stay updated on reservations with the Dashboard Calendar. You can toggle for actionable metrics between the ‘Items’ and ‘Carts’ widgets.

reservation KPIs on dashboard

4. Reservations with Catalog view

In order to reserve an item under the Catalog view, follow these steps:

  • Go to Items → Assets → Click on Catalog View 
  • Now, to create a new reservation. Go to an Asset Details Page and Reserve it.
  • Once you select the Reserve option, an overlay will appear asking you details of your reservation. Here, you’ll have the option to reserve specific items of the selected asset based on their identification number or reserve assets from specific locations. 

If you wish to reserve a specific item of the selected asset, enable Select specific assets option and type in the item name or number. Simply select the item from the drop down list to select the item. 

Also, if you wish to select the item from a location, enable the Select from a specific location option and choose the location from the drop down list. Select the location from “From Location” and “To Location” and you are good to go. 

Note: When you enable “Select Specific Assets” you will be able to select a Location of your choice. 

Mass Reservations in Catalog view: In order to reserve multiple assets simultaneously with the product catalog view enabled:

  • Go to Items→ Assets → Select the assets you want to reserve 
  • The Reservation Overlay will show you the assets selected after you click on Show Details. You can choose the assets to be reserved from specific locations by clicking on Select from a specific location.

5. Capture Signatures on Reservations

Add an extra layer of security to asset tracking by recording signatures with reservations and reservation approvals from Settings Add Ons Capture Signatures. This enables a user to sign whenever he/she makes a reservation on an item or when an admin approves a reservation (if arbitration on the reservation is enabled).

6. Reservation Cancellation

Reservations can be cancelled by staff users and admins both. Simply go to the notification bell and click on ‘Pending Reservations’ as shown below:

This will redirect you to the Reservations page. Here you can go to ‘All Reservations’ and select Asset, Asset Stock or Inventory. After this, you can mass check the Items you want to cancel the reservations for as shown in the image below:

7. Reports Summary 

You can get a comprehensive view of your reservations easily with ‘Reservations Summary’. To view the summary of your reservation reports, go to Reports → Reservations Reports→ Reservations Summary → ‘View Report’

You can summarize your report based on particular criteria. To do this, click on the filter sign on the Report Details page. 

A pop-up window will appear on the left side showing the filters applicable to your report. You can select your requirement from the drop-down in ‘Available Filters’ and ‘Applied Filters’.

For instance, if you click on ‘Reservations – Creation Source’, you can select the creation source data for the report to be imported from. You can choose sources, such as ‘API’, ‘Web app’, ‘Mobile app’, and ‘Request Portal’. N/A can be selected if there is no creation source set.  

Note: If you want to gather data from all the sources, then clear all the filters. 

Similarly, you can select options from ‘Created On’, ‘Location’, and ‘Reserved to Location’. 

Once you have selected the relevant options, hit ‘Apply Filters’.

For example, the following image shows the summary of the total number of reservations created. Here, ‘Total Self Serve’ is the requests where the recipient and requester are the same, and ‘Average Time to Resolve’ is the amount of time taken to respond to a reservation request. 

To get a detailed view of the report, click on ‘View Details’. Here’s what a detailed Reservations  Report looks like:

By following these simple steps, you can generate report summaries easily and improve your data analysis.