Item availability and conflicts are calculated down to the minute so you will always know when you do, and don’t, have inventory available.

An item's "in-use" time is used to determine availability and check for conflicts. "In-use" time is informed by the contract's Line Item Group(s) start and end date(s), while others may be the delivery drop-off and pickup logistics.

So, let’s see it in action. After creating a new project you will create a line item group — we’ll call it Ballroom A. Ballroom A is going to be used all day on March 15th through the end of March 16th so you would see something similar to this:

And this is a visualization of how Goodshuffle Pro defines the "in-use" time for this project:

In Ballroom A, the client would like some tables. Now, when you access your inventory panel, Goodshuffle Pro will use the project's current "in-use" time to check availability across all other projects. Here’s a screenshot showing you how many of each of your round tables you have available during that time.

As soon as you try to book over the available amount, we’ll flag the box with a red input box and button as you can see below. 

You can still add that quantity to your contract, we’ll just flag it with the conflict icon as a reminder. You can view inventory conflicts by selecting '+ Add Inventory Item' beneath the Line Item Group in the project. The red stop sign in the top right will show a date range composed of logistics bounds and project conflict buffers for items.

Let’ go ahead and add the 15 6’ Round Tables.

Now let’s say the client would like also add tables to Ballroom B, but for different dates (from the 16th - 17th). What you would do is create a second Line Item Group called Ballroom B and set the dates accordingly. 

This will update the "in-use" time to March 15th at 12:01 AM — March 17th at 11:59 PM.

When you access the inventory panel again, you’ll notice that you have no 6’ rounds available because we just added those to Ballroom A.

Fast forward to when you add the delivery logistics. In this example you'll deliver on March 14th at 1:00 PM (hooray for tight delivery windows!). When you add the drop-off logistic to the Logistics section of the contract, and because the system knows that logistics affect inventory availability, the project's "in-use" time expand to March 14th @ 1:00 PM — March 17 @ 11:59 PM. Here’s the updated visual:

Similarly, if the pickup logistic date for this contract is March 18th between 2:00 PM and 6:00 PM we’d expand the "in-use" time to end on March 18th @ 6:00 PM. The "in-use" time would look like this:

Finally, if you happen to add logistics that are on the same day as your Line Item Groups, then the "in-use" time will contract. Here's a visual of what the "in-use" time looks like if delivery and pick up were March 15th at 1:00 PM and March 17th @ 6:00 PM, respectively. 

Here's all three examples represented in the same graphic:

That’s the core of Goodshuffle Pro’s availability and conflict detection.

Want to learn more about Category or Project Level Buffers?