Items

Items are the heart of Mango Inventory: every device, piece of furniture or tool with photo, location, responsibility and custom fields. The items table is your workbench — filter, search, save, export.

The table

• Saved views: filter and column combinations you need often (“All laptops”, “Defective devices”) — save them as a view, optionally shared with the whole organization.
• Categories and quick filters (At home location, Low stock, Incomplete, Check overdue, Assigned to me) narrow things down with one click — the same quick filters are also on the mobile app’s home screen and Items tab.
• The “Next check” column shows each item’s earliest due date across its maintenance plans — overdue dates appear in red, sortable and filterable like any date column.
• Search finds items by name; a scanned or typed barcode jumps straight to the item (Barcodes & labels).
• Mass edit (“Mass edit” button at the top right; on narrow windows just the pencil icon) changes fields for many items at once, spreadsheet-style. It takes over the table’s current filters and search — the filters can be adjusted right inside the mass edit, and all matches are changed together, beyond the current page. The min. stock of quantity items can be set in one go too (e.g. min. 5 on 40 consumables); items whose stock is spread across several places are visibly skipped.

Capturing an item

1. “New item” opens the capture form: name, category, home location — the rest is optional. Photos and documents can be attached right while capturing.

2. The detail page collects everything else: photos and documents, status, barcodes, tickets, history and its category’s fields.

   

3. “Assign” changes the location or person — see Assignment & locations.

Categories and custom fields

Under Settings → Categories & fields you define the category tree and, per category, custom fields (text, number, currency, date, select, multi-select, yes/no, link). Currency fields carry a currency per field (default CHF; any ISO currency, e.g. EUR for suppliers in the euro area) and add up in the table (sum in the footer), link fields are directly clickable (e.g. user manuals), multi-select allows several options at once (e.g. ports: HDMI; VGA). Fields are inherited by subcategories; fields marked as “main field” automatically appear as a column when the table is filtered to that category.

Required fields never block: an item missing a required value is marked Incomplete and easy to find via the quick filter.

Text and number fields can be marked as unique (e.g. inventory or serial number): duplicate values are detected and rejected when capturing, in mass edit and on import — differences in case and whitespace don’t count. When you enable it on an existing field, the app shows existing duplicates to clean up.

Individual fields can be restricted to managers only (e.g. purchase price): members and viewers don’t see the value in the table, detail or export — managers and owners do. The setting sits on the field under Categories & fields.

Merging duplicate categories (role Manager and up): was “IT” created twice — say, by an import — pick “Merge with…” in the category’s ⋯ menu and choose the category that remains. A preview shows exactly what will happen beforehand: items, field definitions and subcategories move to the remaining category; all field values are kept. The duplicate is archived — its history stays fully intact.

Models

Many identical devices? A model (e.g. “iPad 10th gen”) carries the name, category and field defaults for all of its units — each stays its own item with its own label and history, but inherits the shared data live from the model. Capturing skips the retyping — the field defaults come prefilled. Everything else under Models.

Containers

An item can sit inside a container — a case, cart or crate that is itself a perfectly normal item (e.g. the toolbox with twelve tools). As long as an item is packed, it follows the container: if the case is moved to another room or lent to a person, that automatically applies to its whole contents — a single assignment is enough.

• Packing: on the container’s detail page under Contents (“Add”), or via the item’s container row. Fastest with the mobile app: “Add by scanning” keeps the camera running, and every scanned code lands straight in the container — ideal for stocking a case in the supply room.
• Location and person of a packed item are derived from the container and shown dimmed with “Follows the container”. The table shows the relation right in the location column (“In toolbox · Room 102”) and offers its own Container column for filtering and grouping. Scanning shows the relation too: “In toolbox · Room 102”.
• Unpacking (“Remove from container”) pins the container’s current location onto the item — if the case is moved later, the removed item stays where it is. If a packed item is assigned directly (say, a tool from the case lent to a person), it is automatically unpacked first.
• Containers nest up to three levels deep (the toolbox inside the transport crate); quantity items (consumables) can’t be packed. When retiring a container with contents, the app asks first — the contents are unpacked at the container’s location.
• Packing pays off at stocktaking: counting the container is enough — the app offers to confirm the packed contents along with it.

Status

The status describes the condition: Ready to use, Defective, In repair, Lost, Retired. It is independent of whether the item is currently assigned to someone. Defective and In repair are closely tied to tickets — a defect report can set the status directly.

Tip

Drafts come from quick capturing with the mobile app: photo and barcode first, details later at the computer. Drafts are personal — and they really do live in one place only: under “Drafts” in the navigation (right below “Items”), in the mobile app’s capture list, and as a number under “My tasks”. They do not appear in the items table, in search, in pickers, orders, tickets or exports — not even for the person who captured them. To everyone else (managers and admins included) they are invisible anyway; scanning the barcode of someone else’s capture only tells you that the code is reserved by an unpublished capture. While something is a draft it also cannot be put into an order, a ticket, a reservation or a container — that starts at publication. And drafts don’t count toward the free plan’s 50-item allowance: only the published item counts.

Publishing a draft needs a category and its category’s required fields. Unique values (an inventory number, say) are only claimed at that moment — two people may capture the same number, and it belongs to whoever publishes first; a barcode, by contrast, is reserved from the moment of capture.

As long as your own captures are open, the row “Review your captures” with the count appears automatically under “My tasks” — it disappears by itself once everything is reviewed. On the “Drafts” page your own captures are grouped by capture day; “Review drafts” opens the review — photo large, fields directly editable, “Create” (or Enter) publishes and jumps to the next capture. “Save” keeps it as a draft for later, and accidental captures are discarded with one click.