Equipment Management

Sonido Equipment Management allows you to build a database of all studio equipment within your Sonido account and document details, such as the equipment make, model, serial number, purchase date, status, and more.

This guide will walk through the process of adding your equipment to your Sonido account. 

EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT

The Equipment Management page is located within your Sonido account menu and can be accessed by selecting “Equipment.”

Once you select the Equipment Management page, you will see the information page where any equipment added to your Sonido account will be displayed.

The columns on the page relate to information from the equipment that has been added to the list: 

• Equipment Photo
• Item Name
• Category
• Subcategory
• Serial Number
• Status – this will indicate the current status of a piece of equipment, such as Available, In Use, or Maintenance
• QR Code (Label) – this will indicate if a piece of equipment has been linked with a QR Code label for tracking purposes (This will only display if you have Equipment Tracking enabled as an add-on for your account)

CATEGORY & SUBCATEGORY MANAGEMENT

You can customize your options within the Category and Subcategory lists by going to Settings -> Equipment Categories. Any options that you create as a Category or Subcategory will be available for selection when adding equipment to the Equipment Management page.  

A Category is a high-level category, such as "Microphone", "Instrument", "Computer", etc., whereas a Subcategory is a more granular level deeper. For example, your Category may be "Microphone", whereas you may have multiple Subcategories under that Category, such as "Dynamic", "Condenser", "Tube", "Ribbon", etc. 

A Category is required for each piece of equipment that you create, and the Subcategory is optional (but recommended). It is recommended that you build your list of Categories prior to creating equipment in your account.

ADD EQUIPMENT

To add equipment to your Sonido account, you will select the “+ Create New Equipment” button in the Equipment Management page. This will open a dialog where you can add all the necessary details for the new piece of equipment. 

The following is a breakdown of each of the fields in this dialog: 

• Category (required) – you will select the appropriate Category for the piece of equipment. The options in this field should represent a high-level category, such as Microphone, Piano, Guitar, etc. The options within this list may be managed within the Picklist Manager in your account Settings.
• Subcategory – you will select the appropriate Subcategory for the piece of equipment. The options in this field will be subcategory options related to the selected Category field. For example, if the Category is Microphone, the subcategory options may include: Condenser, Dynamic, Ribbon, etc. The options within this list may be managed within the Picklist Manager in your account Settings.
• Photo – you will upload a photo relevant to this piece of equipment. This may be a photo you take of the actual piece of equipment (recommended), or a photo of the equipment saved from an online product page.
  NOTE: If you add this equipment via a mobile device, it may be easier to simply take a photo of the equipment and attach to the new equipment while creating the record.
• Name (required) – you will give your equipment a name. It is recommended that each piece of equipment has a unique name, but you may find that you have identical equipment with the same name, in which case the Serial Number will become a unique identifier. 
• Brand – you will indicate the Brand of the equipment.
• Model – you will indicate the Model of the equipment. 
• Serial Number (required) – you will indicate the Serial Number of the equipment. This should be a unique number for each piece of equipment within the equipment list. 
• Status – you will indicate the current Status of the equipment. Options include Available and Maintenance. 
• Market Value – you will indicate the Market Value of the equipment. This will be a number without any characters (you do not need to add a “$”).
• Purchase Price – you will indicate the Purchase Price of the equipment. This will be a number without any characters (you do not need to add a “$”).
• Purchase Date – you will indicate the Purchase Date of the equipment. 
• Department – you will indicate the Department to whom the equipment belongs. The options within this list may be managed within the Picklist Manager in your account Settings.
• Warranty Group – you will indicate any Warranty Group to which the equipment corresponds. The options within this list may be managed within the Picklist Manager in your account Settings.
• Primary Location – you will indicate the Primary Location where this equipment resides. The options within this list may be managed within the Picklist Manager in your account Settings.
• Current Location – you will indicate the Current Location where this equipment is located. The options within this list may be managed within the Picklist Manager in your account Settings.
• Daily Rate – you will indicate a Daily Rate that is assigned to the equipment (you do not need to add a “$”). This is a monetary value that may be tracked for reporting or invoicing purposes within your account.
• Hourly Rate – you will indicate an Hourly Rate that is assigned to the equipment (you do not need to add a “$”). This is a monetary value that may be tracked for reporting or invoicing purposes within your account.  
• Description – you will populate a description of this piece of equipment for general reference.

Once you have added all relevant information to the equipment, you may press “Save” to save the record to your list in the Equipment Manager. You will repeat this process until all equipment has been saved within the Equipment Manager. 

MANAGING EQUIPMENT

When viewing the Equipment list, you have some options to modify your view within the list and/or manage equipment. 

LIST FILTERS
Above the list of equipment to the left are the list filters – one is to filter the list by Category, and the other is to filter the list by Equipment Status. By making a filter selection, the list will update with records that match the filter(s) that is applied.

LIST SEARCH
Above the list of equipment to the right is a search field. This search field will query the Item Name and Serial Number fields to identify any matches from the searched text.

LIST PAGES
At the bottom right of the equipment list there are page options. Depending on the number of records within your account, equipment may be found across multiple pages. You can select how many records should display on each page, and toggle between pages to find equipment as necessary.

EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT ICONS
Each equipment record has several icons to the right of the record name to further manage actions with the equipment. The following is a breakdown of what each of these options includes: 

The View option will open the equipment record to view additional details, such as all field data for the equipment, the current status of the equipment, and the equipment usage history. Alternatively, users can also simply select the equipment in the list to open the View screen.

The Edit option will open the equipment record in the Edit view, allowing the user to make changes to the record as necessary.

The QR Code option allows the user to assign a QR Code (label) to the equipment for equipment tracking purposes. This link will drive the QR Code (Label) column details within the Equipment List, indicating which equipment in “Not Linked” or “Linked”.

The Duplicate option allows the user to duplicate this piece of equipment as a new record. This is helpful when you have equipment whose data fields are nearly identical, but you may want to change details, such as the Serial Number. 

The Delete options allows a user to delete the equipment from the list. This right is based on user privileges and may be added or removed from a user profile for security purposes.

VIEWING EQUIPMENT

From the Equipment list, you can select any equipment row to open the Equipment View. In this view, you can see all relevant data fields for the equipment, including the equipment photo, which can be selected to view the photo larger in a new window. 

As a part of the Equipment Tracking add-on, you would also see the full Equipment use history from this view, which details an audit trail of every time a piece of equipment was checked out, checked back in, which users in your Sonido account took the action, and where the equipment was checked into. This usage becomes especially useful when a piece of equipment becomes lost, as you can review the recent usage to determine who last touched the equipment and what session it was used on (or what location it was checked out to). 

🔵 EQUIPMENT TRACKING

Equipment Tracking is a new feature that is currently being designed for a future release within Sonido. The Equipment Tracking system will allow you to add QR codes to all your equipment, link those labels with your Sonido Equipment list, and begin tracking all equipment usage by computer or by mobile device by simply scanning the QR code label to check equipment out or back in. This release will also allow you to track equipment across multiple locations, as necessary.

Equipment Tracking will be sold as an add-on to Sonido accounts. More information will be made available as this new feature is released. If you have interest in adding Equipment Tracking to your Sonido account, please contact Sonido at [e-mail]. 

READ MORE

• Equipment Categories