Kit room tracking and equipment booking
A kit room is a lot of money in a small space, going out with people who are, quite often, freelance and in a hurry. The gear comes back or it does not, and the difference is usually whether anyone wrote down who took it.
No card, no sales call. Set up as media & production and the whole system uses these words — consumables, kit, production.
Why kit rooms leak
Crews are assembled per production, so the person taking a camera body may not be there next week and may never have met whoever runs the store. Trust is doing a lot of work.
Kit goes out as a set and comes back as pieces — a body, three lenses, two batteries, a cage, a cable. The set is what was booked, but the pieces are what actually walk, and a booking sheet does not know the difference.
And a lost item is discovered on the next shoot, not the last one. By then the paper trail is two productions old and nobody can say which.
What Nilstock does in a media kit room
Book kit out to a crew member
Scan the person, scan each case or item, confirm. Every piece is against a named person with a due date, not against a production in general.
Against a production
Movements carry a production or job reference, so kit usage can be attributed and charged, and "what went out on that shoot" is a query.
Check every case back in
Returning is the same flow in reverse, and what has not come back is a list you see while the crew is still in the building.
Damage recorded at the point it is noticed
Kit can come back flagged as damaged, which holds it off the shelf until someone deals with it. A broken lens does not get booked out to the next crew because it looked available.
Consumables counted
Tape, gels, batteries, media cards and cable ties counted with minimums, so the store does not run out mid-production and nobody spends a shoot day in a hire shop.
A history per item, not per booking
Because every piece has its own record, you can see everywhere a specific body or lens has been and who had it each time. That is the difference between "it went missing at some point" and a date, a production and a name.
All of it is the same engine everyone else gets — see the full feature list.
Questions people in this sector ask
- Is this a rental or hire management system?
- No. Nilstock tracks custody and stock — who has it, when it is due, what came back. It does not do rate cards, quotes, invoicing or availability calendars. If you are a hire company, you need a hire system.
- Can we track kit as sets rather than pieces?
- You can track anything with a tag as its own asset, and check several out in one go against one person. There is no formal "kit list" object yet — each piece is its own record, which is what makes a missing battery visible.
- Do freelancers need accounts?
- No. They are people on the system with a card or a number, added in seconds. Pricing is per site, so a big crew costs nothing extra.
- Does it do serial numbers?
- Every asset carries a serial number field, searchable — which is what you need for an insurance claim or a police report.
- Can we print labels for existing kit?
- Yes, Code 128 barcode labels straight from the asset register, so gear you already own gets tagged without buying a labelling system.
- What about kit that goes out for weeks at a time?
- Set a due date to match the shoot rather than a default loan period. Nothing chases until the date passes, so a six-week booking is not six weeks of noise, and the day it does overrun somebody hears about it.
Guides worth reading first
Equipment
How to stop losing tools on site without treating people like suspects
Most tools are not stolen — they are in a van or a toolbox and nobody wrote it down. What works for tool accountability, and what makes it worse.
Hardware
Choosing a barcode scanner for a store room: what actually matters
Keyboard-wedge versus everything else, 1D versus 2D, corded versus Bluetooth, and why the £30 reader is usually the right answer. A practical buying guide.
Stock control
When a stores spreadsheet stops working (and why it is not the spreadsheet)
Most stores spreadsheets stop being accurate within months, and the cause is not Excel. Four signs you have crossed the line, and what actually fixes it.
Same engine, other sectors
Stop guessing what is in the kit room
Fourteen days free. Import your list, pair a tablet, and find out where things actually go. It takes about half an hour to reach a real movement.
Consumables counted, kit tracked to a crew member, every movement logged.