Resource Management

Resources are the building blocks of work in Aptli: the materials, labour types, and equipment that get planned into jobs, allocated through work orders, stocked at sites, and consumed on field reports. Registering them once, in a shared catalogue, is what makes planning, stock tracking, and reporting line up across the whole system.

This page is the conceptual overview. For step-by-step instructions, follow the links to the Materials pages.

What counts as a resource

Planned labour — e.g. installation of field equipment, tracked by hours or days
Ad hoc work — e.g. draining a flooded access point
Consumable stock — e.g. metres of cable or countable fittings
Non-consumable equipment — e.g. ladders and forklifts

It isn't critical to capture every possible item up front, but defining your most common needs — rather than dumping everything into a catch-all "miscellaneous" — makes reporting and planning far more useful.

How a resource flows through the system

A resource is defined once, then referenced everywhere it's needed. The same catalogue entry threads through planning, stock, and reporting:

        ┌──────────────────────┐
        │  RESOURCE (catalogue) │   defined once: name, units, tags
        └───────────┬──────────┘
                    │ referenced by…
      ┌─────────────┼─────────────────────────────┐
      ▼             ▼                              ▼
 ┌─────────┐   ┌──────────────┐            ┌──────────────────┐
 │  JOB    │   │  STOCK ITEM  │            │     REPORT       │
 │ plans   │   │ a balance at │            │ records what was │
 │ how much│   │ a SITE       │            │ actually consumed│
 │ is needed│  └──────┬───────┘            └────────┬─────────┘
 └─────────┘          │                            │
                      │ every movement (receipt,   │
                      ▼ transfer, pickup,          ▼
                 ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
                 │            TRANSACTION                 │
                 │  the immutable record of stock moving  │
                 └──────────────────────────────────────┘

The work-side companion to a resource is an activity — the type of work a crew performs, declared on a work order. Resources cover what work consumes; activities cover what work does. Both can be drawn from a catalogue or entered ad hoc.

Ways to group resources

It's useful to think of resources in three broad groups — but this is a conceptual grouping, not a structural split. A resource isn't divided into fixed types; if you want to filter by these groups, apply them with tags:

Material — consumable items tracked by quantity and unit of measure (e.g. Cat6 cable in metres, conduit fittings by count)
Labour — people or teams required for a job, tracked by hours or days. The work itself is usually modelled as an activity rather than a resource
Equipment — non-consumable items that are allocated and returned (e.g. ladders, vehicles, test equipment)

Where to manage resources

Task	Location
Create and edit resource definitions	Resource Catalog
Track stock movements, and see what needs you	Movements
Manage sites and see stock by location	Holdings
Check whether another site already has something	Find Stock
Define the work crews perform	Activity Catalog

Getting started

Setting up resources for the first time? Start with the Resource Catalog guide for step-by-step instructions on building your catalogue, then see How Aptli Fits Together for the big-picture relationships.