Rooms, Inventory and Facilities | alinaflow Help Center

Room Bookings

Room Bookings

Students reserve practice rooms for self-directed practice. Staff create bookings directly (auto-approved) or students request them via the Family Portal (staff approves). Each booking snapshots the room's pricing at creation; staff mark the booking completed afterwards - if it Happened, an invoice is posted to the requester's account. Conflict detection flags overlapping lessons from active classes so staff see when a room is already busy.

Reserving a room for something that is not a class: a rehearsal, a parents evening, a private hire. Bookings compete with classes for the same rooms, so conflict detection covers both.

Adding a new room booking

Inside a room booking record

Rentals

What is a rental?

A rental is a loan of one or more inventory items to a student, picked up on a specific date from a location and due back by another. You can mix serialized units (a specific violin) and bulk items (3 sheet-music binders) on the same rental. Rentals that return on time - with no base fee - leave no paper trail. When a fee or a late-return charge applies, an invoice is generated automatically at return time and routes through the normal billing flow (notifications, accounting push, autopay). Lost rentals flag their serialized units as Lost, removing them from the available pool.

Equipment that leaves the building with a student, most often instruments. Tracks who has what, since when, and what it costs. The rental fee can ride on the family invoice rather than being collected separately.

Adding a new rental

Inside a rental record

Key fields

Origin location - Where the items live before pickup and where they come back to after return. Drives availability checks and the daily location checklist.
Picked up at - The moment the student takes the items. Blocks availability for other events/lessons/rentals that overlap this window.
Due back by - When the items must be returned. Drives the overdue flag, the daily checklist's return section, and the reminder cron (T-7 / T-1 / T0 / T+1 / T+7).
Rental fee - Optional flat amount charged on an invoice when the rental is returned. Leave blank for a free loan. Combined with any accrued late-fee at return time.
Status - 'Active': items are out with the student. 'Returned': all items came back; invoice (if any) was posted. 'Lost': staff escalated an unreturned rental; serialized units were marked Lost in the inventory pool.
Items - One row per inventory item on this rental. Serialized items (TrackEachUnit = true) must pick a specific unit; bulk items take a quantity instead. Item list is locked after creation - cancel the rental and re-create if it's wrong.

Inventory

What is Inventory?

Your Inventory is the full catalog of physical things the school owns: instruments, costumes, balls, microphones, tablets - anything you'd want to know the location of. Build a catalog of Items, then register each physical Unit with its own identifier, condition, and placement (a Location, Room, or Warehouse). Every time you move a Unit, the system logs a Movement so you always know where it has been and who touched it.

What you own and where it is: instruments, equipment, teaching materials, costumes. Items can be assigned to a room, to a show, or out on rental, so the answer to where something is does not depend on who you ask.

Adding a new inventory item

Inside an inventory item record

Maintenance

What is Facilities Maintenance?

Two complementary lists for keeping each location running. Issues track things that need fixing - broken AC, peeling paint, stuck drawers - with photos so the maintenance team sees the problem before they show up. Supplies track consumables and hardware that need to be bought (paint, masking tape, screws). Both feed into Tasks automatically, so what's open here also shows up on the staff inbox.

Servicing and repair against inventory items. A piano that needs tuning every six months is a scheduled task here rather than something someone remembers.

Adding a new maintenance issue

Inside a maintenance issue record

Key fields

Lifecycle - Issues go Open → In progress → Done. Supplies go Requested → Bought → Consumed all. Reorder creates a new supply row when something runs out.
Photos - Drop or snap a phone photo on each issue so the maintenance team can see what is broken.
Tasks integration - Open issues and Requested supplies show up automatically in the staff Tasks inbox; once you mark them done they disappear from there.
Priority - High items are urgent. Set it on creation; staff sort issues and supplies by priority and date.
Location - Always set a Location so the row routes to the right physical site. Optional Room or free-text Area for the specific spot inside the location.