You asked for a more comprehensive way to organise your equipment that actually reflects the way your gear is allocated in the real world. 

We’re excited to introduce Folders, a new and more intuitive way to organise your assets. 

To make room for this powerful feature, Groups will be transitioning to Labels. But don’t worry, we’re here to guide you through the transition smoothly.

In short, we're making Scannable smarter by adding nested folders to help you manage your inventory more effectively. It’s just like you would organise files on your computer. 

The difference between Groups and Folders

Groups was a simple way to assign your equipment to Kit Bags, Locations, and more. 

It had its limitations though. Not being able to nest one group inside another made it difficult for you to create a system that reflected the way your equipment is organised and allocated in the real world.

With Folders, we’re bringing you a structure that allows you to more accurately represent where your equipment is. Folders provide a better overview of equipment, especially for complex inventories.

Folders are replacing Groups as the primary way to organise your inventory. 

• Folders let you organise your equipment in a way that accurately represents where the equipment is: what storeroom location it lives in, what job it’s assigned to, and what vehicle it should be in, for example
• You can create subfolders within folders, unlike Groups, which only allowed a single level of categorisation. This means you can organise your equipment in a way that mirrors what your gear actually looks like on the job
• Unlike groups, an item can only belong to one folder

Groups will be transitioning to Labels, helping you categorise your inventory in an even more flexible way. 

• The Groups menu will disappear from the left-hand menu
• Any item that is in a group will retain that group name as a label 
• You will be able to filter by labels as you would have filtered by groups

What You Need to Do

To make the most of the organisational superpowers of Folders, you may wish to migrate some of your groups to folders.

Key things to know about migrating your groups to folders:

Items can only belong to one folder.

If you convert multiple groups that contain the same items, those items will be moved to the folder that has most recently been converted from a group. This can cause the items to disappear from the folders you created previously. 

For this reason, we strongly recommend that you plan your folder structure before converting your groups to folders. 

To make sure your items end up in the correct folders, convert your groups to folders top down, starting with the broadest folder/group first. 

For example, if your inventory is organised by location, then client, then kit bag, you should convert your groups to folders in that order.

What not to convert. 

Some groups should not be converted to folders. 

If you have a group that labels equipment rather than organises it, like Equipment Type (Staff PPE, etc), these should stay as groups rather than becoming folders. 

This way, the item can be assigned to the folder that best represents how your inventory is organised (store room/vehicle/kit bag etc), and also be given a label that you can then filter by (giving you an overview of every item of PPE that has been allocated to your team, for example). 

If your group is used as a way of labelling equipment rather than organising it, don’t convert it. Keep it as a group/label.

Labels are great for categorising items in flexible ways across different folders, while folders give you a structured view of your inventory.

Ready to Get Started?

We’ve written a how-to guide with step-by-step instructions for creating folders, moving your groups to folders, organising your folders, and more. Check it out here.

If you have questions or need further help, please reach out to our support team: support@scannable.io.

Thank you for being a valued part of the Scannable community—we’re excited for this next step in making safety equipment management easier and more efficient for you!