Resources Overview, Resource Types and Inventory

A resource is anything an event needs that you either supply yourself or source from someone else: a truck, a lift, a console, a stagehand call. The resource system is how BackOps describes those things once, prices them, records which ones you own, and carries them from an advance request through procurement to fulfillment.

Why the Resource System Matters

Without a shared definition, every kind of truck or console gets its own private list of fields. The 15 ft, 16 ft and 26 ft box trucks each carry a separate "Registration Expiration", nothing guarantees they match, and nobody can ask which registrations expire this month across the whole fleet. Pricing drifts the same way, because each copy of a rate gets edited on its own, and overtime gets worked out by hand on every invoice.

The resource system fixes this by defining things once and reusing them. A fleet manager defines "Registration Expiration" one time and places it on every truck type. A coordinator prices a type once, and every request for it picks up that price. Labor rules turn scheduled hours into overtime without anyone doing the math.

How the Resource System Works

The system has two halves: Resource Templates, which describe what kinds of things exist and what they cost, and Inventory, which records the actual units and people you have.

Resource types describe a kind of thing, such as "Box Truck", "Line Array" or "A1". A type is either an Asset or Crew, sits in a category, and has a tracking type that says how its inventory is counted. A type can also have variants, for example a 15 ft, 16 ft and 26 ft version of the same truck.

Attributes are the fields a type carries. They live in one library for the organization and are placed onto types, so one attribute serves every type that uses it and can be compared across all of them.

Rate cards hold what a type costs you and what you charge for it. Each type owns its own rate cards, and each rate prices a state, such as Regular or Overtime.

Rule sets decide which state scheduled time is in. A rule such as "after 10 hours, Overtime" moves time into a state, and the rate card prices it.

Composite types are assembled from other types. A semi is a tractor, a trailer and a driver.

Inventory holds the resources you own: truck GC-014, a pool of 40 radios, or a crew member who can work as an A1. A collaborator who supplies a type at their own price is recorded as a provider offering.

flowchart LR
    A["Attributes"] --> T["Resource type"]
    T --> V["Variants"]
    T --> R["Rate cards"]
    S["States"] --> R
    RS["Rule sets"] --> T
    T --> I["Inventory resources"]
    T --> P["Provider offerings"]
    T --> E["Events"]

Where You Find It

Organization admins build types, attributes, categories, block types, states and rule sets under Settings, in Resource Templates. Inventory has its own entry in the organization sidebar, with a Resources tab and a Provider offerings tab.

An event uses the same model. It can pull types and inventory from the organization and can also hold types of its own, which an event admin manages in the event's settings under Resources. See Event Resources for the event side.