Provider System

Provider System

How to track equipment sources, manage providers, and filter exports by gear origin.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Requirements
• Understanding Providers
• Provider Types
• Built-in Providers
• Custom Providers
• Assigning Providers
• Provider Management
• Bulk Operations
• Export by Provider
• Provider Reports
• Provider Colors & Visuals
• Use Cases
• Best Practices
• Troubleshooting
• Related Documentation

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Overview

The Provider System helps you track where each piece of equipment comes from. This is essential for:

• Production coordination: Know who to contact for each item
• Rental management: Track rental periods and returns
• Cost tracking: Understand equipment sourcing costs
• Export organization: Generate separate lists for different vendors
• Crew coordination: Identify crew-supplied gear

Requirements

Functional Requirements

Non-Functional Requirements

Data Requirements

• Provider data: { id, name, type, contactId?, color?, notes?, default? }
• Built-in providers: Always present, cannot be deleted
• Custom providers: Stored on the project and in settings → cloud sync
• Assignments: Stored per gear-list item as providerId reference

Constraints & Limits

• Available to all tiers (Free and Pro)
• System providers (Owned, Rental, Crew) cannot be deleted or renamed
• Provider colours are hash-derived from the provider id (see Colour coding below); they are not configurable per provider type

Offline Behavior

• Fully available offline — all provider CRUD, assignment, and export operations work without network
• Provider changes sync to cloud when connectivity is restored

Dependencies

• Requires: Projects — providers assigned within project context
• Required by: Analytics (REQ-ANA-001) — provider cost aggregation
• Required by: Subrental — subrental provider selection

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Understanding Providers

What is a Provider?

A provider represents the source of an equipment item:

• Source tracking: Where the gear comes from
• Contact linking: Connect to your contact book
• Export filtering: Generate provider-specific PDFs
• Visual identification: Color-coded in the UI

Provider Data Structure

interface Provider {
  id: string;
  name: string;
  type: 'owned' | 'rental' | 'crew' | 'client' | 'custom';
  contactId?: string; // Link to contact
  color?: string; // Visual identifier
  notes?: string;
  default?: boolean; // Is this a system default
}

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Provider Types

System Providers (Built-in)

These providers are always available:

There are three, not four. This guide listed a Client system provider until 2026-09-07. No such provider exists — the matchers are matchOwnedGear, matchHouseGear and matchCrewSharedGear, and the selector's sub-panels are owned / rental / crew. The word client in this app is a project metadata field (the customer, sitting beside name, location and dates), not a source of equipment. If a client supplies gear, record it under Rental or a custom provider named for them.

Custom Providers

Beyond the three families, an assignment names a concrete source:

• Specific rental houses (e.g., "LensPro Rentals", "CameraTech")
• Crew members with their own gear
• Production companies sharing equipment
• Partners or co-producers

See Custom Providers below for how one is set.

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Built-in Providers

Owned

Equipment that belongs to you or your company.

Characteristics:

• Default provider for new items
• No return dates to track
• Insurance responsibility: You
• Maintenance: Your responsibility

Best For:

• Personal gear
• Company inventory
• Long-term investments

Rental

Generic rental provider for equipment from rental houses.

Characteristics:

• Temporary possession
• Return dates to track
• Insurance: Usually rental house
• Daily/weekly rates apply

Best For:

• One-off rentals
• When specific vendor unknown yet
• Quick assignments before finalizing vendor

Crew

Equipment provided by individual crew members.

Characteristics:

• Personal gear of crew
• Day rate or kit fee may apply
• Insurance: Crew's responsibility
• Specialized equipment

Best For:

• DP's personal camera package
• Gaffer's lighting kit
• Sound mixer's audio gear

Custom Providers

There is no provider record to create, edit or delete. This guide described a "Settings → Providers" form until 2026-09-08 — name, type, contact link, colour, notes, a Save button, an Edit/Delete list and a reassign-on-delete dialog — plus copy-paste "provider templates". None of it exists. A provider is not an entity you maintain; it is an assignment on an item, and the concrete source it points at is a rental house or a contact you already have.

Assignments are made per item, from the provider dropdown on a gear-list row (or the Providers tab of the Edit Item modal). Under Add Provider the dropdown offers the three families:

An item can carry several assignments, each supplying part of the quantity. Drag to reorder them, edit the per-assignment quantity inline, and remove one with the ✕ on its row. Nothing is "orphaned" by a delete, because removing an assignment only clears that row's source.

Where the named sources are maintained: rental houses in the Rental Houses surface, and crew in Contacts / Connected Crew.

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Assigning Providers

Automatic Owned Assignment (on add)

When you add a device you own to a project's gear list — via Auto Gear, Project Requirements, or the device search / picker in the Equipment list — it is automatically assigned the Owned provider (your specific inventory unit), so you don't have to set it by hand.

• Availability-aware: if your owned unit is already committed to another project whose dates overlap this one ("used elsewhere"), the item is left unassigned instead — so you can decide how to source it (rental, sub-rental, etc.).
• Partial stock splits: if you need more than you have free (e.g. 3 needed, 2 free), Owned covers the free units and the remainder stays unassigned.
• New items only: items already present when you open the project are never re-assigned — only devices you add afterward. Items you deliberately left unassigned stay that way, and the automatic assignment is not a separate Undo step.
• Your own gear only: contact-owned and connected-crew shared gear are not auto-assigned — pick those from the provider dropdown as before.

Supply Suggestions

Added in v0.721.0 (#607).

When you add an item that a supply source you already have can cover, a suggestion strip appears under the gear-list row with one action: accept, and the provider assignment is written for you.

Sources are offered in this order, and only one shows at a time:

1. Owned gear — first, because using it costs nothing.
2. Rental house stock — when one of your own custom rental houses lists the item in its Gear tab inventory.
3. Connected crew — when a colleague you are connected with shares the item in a rental catalogue.

Dismissing the strip with the ✕ hides it for that row. Matching is exact: the item's device-library link first, then its name after normalisation, so a free-text item matches a house's free-text stock by name. A house you have merged into another is never suggested — the surviving house is.

Catalogue Checks

Once a rental house has stock of its own, the provider chip stops taking your word for it:

A house with no stock entered at all warns about nothing — an empty inventory is not evidence that an item is missing.

Single Item Assignment

Method 1: Inline Edit

1. Open project workspace
2. Find the item to update
3. Click the provider badge or provider column
4. Select provider from dropdown
5. Optionally add provider-specific notes

Method 2: Item Detail Panel

1. Click on item to open detail panel
2. Find Provider section
3. Select provider from dropdown
4. Add pickup/return dates (for rentals)
5. Add notes specific to this provider
6. Save changes

Provider-Specific Details

When assigning a provider, you can add:

For Rentals:

• Pickup date and time
• Return date and time
• Rental rate (daily/weekly)
• Confirmation number
• Contact person

For Crew:

• Crew member name
• Kit fee or day rate
• Special handling instructions

For All Providers:

• Provider-specific notes
• Condition notes
• Insurance information

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Provider Management

There is no provider dashboard and no provider statistics screen. This guide described both until 2026-09-07 — a "Settings → Providers" overview with counts, filter, search and sort-by-usage, per-provider details (items assigned, active projects, associated contacts, recent activity), and statistics including a "Trends: usage over time" view. None of it exists: there is no Providers tab in Settings, and nothing in the codebase implements a provider dashboard or provider statistics. (The one "Providers" heading in Settings belongs to AI Integration and means AI model providers — OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini — which is unrelated to gear.)

Where providers actually live. They are managed per item and per project, not from a central screen:

• Rental houses are maintained in the Rental Houses surface, and their stock feeds the catalogue check described above.
• A single item's provider is set from the item's provider selector (owned / rental / crew).
• Many items at once — see Bulk Operations below.

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Bulk Operations

Bulk Provider Assignment

Assign providers to multiple items at once:

1. Select items:

   • Click checkbox on each item
   • Or use "Select All" in category
   • Or use "Select Category"

2. Open the bulk bar:

   • It appears once items are selected; the grouped menu is "Bulk actions"
   • There is no right-click menu on the gear list — this guide described one until 2026-09-07

3. Click "Assign provider" and choose the provider in the selector that opens.

4. Other bulk controls sit beside it: Apply (the confirm button, not "Apply to Selected"), Batch status, Edit properties, Set camera, Set status, Quantity, and the Move to category / department / project / gear list / temp gear group.

Changing or clearing a provider in bulk

"Assign provider" is the only bulk provider control, and it covers both cases — assigning over an existing provider is how you change one. This guide described separate "Remove Provider" and "Change Provider" actions until 2026-09-07, along with a "keep or overwrite provider notes" choice. None of the three exists; the None (remove) option in the bulk bar belongs to Set camera, not to providers.

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Export by Provider

Filtered PDF Export

Generate PDFs filtered by provider:

Steps:

1. Open project workspace
2. Click "Export" button
3. Choose "Advanced Export"
4. Enable "Filter by Provider"
5. Select provider(s) to include:
   • Single provider: One provider only
   • Multiple providers: Check multiple
   • All: Include all providers (default)
6. Configure other export options
7. Click "Generate PDF"

Export Options by Provider

Group by Provider:

Organize PDF sections by provider:

Project: Corporate Shoot

OWNED EQUIPMENT
- Camera A
- Lens Kit

RENTAL: LensPro Rentals
- Telephoto Lens
- Lighting Kit

CREW: John Smith (DP)
- Specialty Filters

Separate PDFs per Provider:

Generate individual PDFs for each provider:

1. Enable "Separate PDFs by Provider"
2. Each provider gets own PDF
3. Download as ZIP or individual files
4. Useful for sending to specific vendors

Provider Contact Information

Include provider contacts in export:

1. Enable "Include Provider Contacts"
2. PDF includes:
   • Provider name
   • Contact person
   • Phone/email
   • Address (if rental house)

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Provider Reports

Provider Summary Report

Generate a summary of all providers in a project:

Access: Project → Reports → Provider Summary

Report Contents:

Provider Summary: Corporate Shoot

OWNED (5 items)
- 2 Cameras
- 3 Lenses
Total value: $25,000

RENTAL: LensPro Rentals (3 items)
- 1 Telephoto Lens
- 2 Lighting fixtures
Rental period: Mar 15-17, 2026
Estimated cost: $450

CREW: John Smith (2 items)
- Specialty filters
- Custom rig
Kit fee: $200/day

Provider Comparison

There is no cross-project provider comparison report. This guide offered one at "Settings → Providers → Comparison Report" until 2026-09-08, with most-frequently-used, item counts, cost analysis and rental-duration trends. Nothing implements it. The one Comparison Report in the app belongs to quote comparison and compares rental-house quotes for a single project — see Sub-Rentals.

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Provider Colors & Visuals

Default Color Scheme

Provider colours are derived, not assigned. getProviderColor(providerId) hashes the provider's id and indexes a fixed 20-colour palette (#FF6B6B, #4ECDC4, #45B7D1, …) defined in app/src/data/devices/providerColors.js. The same provider therefore always gets the same colour, and two providers can collide — the palette is for telling groups apart in a PDF export, not a brand system.

This guide published a fixed table until 2026-09-07 — Owned green #22c55e, Rental blue #3b82f6, Crew purple #a855f7, Client orange #f97316. No such mapping exists: none of those four hexes appears in the palette, and no code assigns a colour per provider type.

Visual Indicators

In Project List:

• Provider badge on each item
• Color-coded border or background
• Provider icon

In PDF Export:

• Color-coded sections
• Provider headers
• Legend explaining colors

In Provider Selector:

• Color swatch
• Provider icon
• Usage count

Customizing Colors

Colours cannot be customized — there is no colour picker, because there is no provider record to attach one to. Each provider's colour is derived from its id, as described above.

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Use Cases

Use Case 1: Rental House Management

Scenario: Production using multiple rental houses

Setup:

1. Create custom providers:
   • "LensPro Rentals"
   • "CameraTech NYC"
   • "LightWorks"
2. Assign gear to appropriate rental house
3. Add pickup/return dates
4. Track confirmation numbers

Export:

• Generate separate PDFs for each rental house
• Include contact information
• Send to vendors for pickup coordination

Use Case 2: Crew Kit Coordination

Scenario: DP and Gaffer bringing personal gear

Setup:

1. Create providers:
   • "Sarah Chen (DP)"
   • "Mike Rodriguez (Gaffer)"
2. Link to crew contacts
3. Add kit fees
4. Note any special handling

Benefits:

• Clear responsibility
• Easy kit fee tracking
• Contact info readily available

Use Case 3: Client-Provided Equipment

Scenario: Client providing specialty equipment

Setup:

1. Create provider: "Acme Corp (Client)"
2. Mark items as client-provided
3. Add insurance notes
4. Note special handling requirements

Export:

• Separate section for client gear
• Highlight insurance responsibilities
• Include client contact

Use Case 4: Cost Tracking

Scenario: Tracking production equipment costs

Setup:

1. Assign all rental items with rates
2. Calculate rental periods
3. Compare owned vs rental costs
4. Generate cost reports

Benefits:

• Budget planning
• Cost analysis
• Future rental decisions

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Best Practices

1. Assign Providers Early

• Set providers when adding items
• Easier than bulk assignment later
• Ensures nothing is missed

2. Use Consistent Naming

• Standardize rental house names
• Full company names, not abbreviations
• Consistent crew member format

Examples:

• ✅ "LensPro Rentals - NYC"
• ✅ "Sarah Chen (DP)"
• ❌ "LensPro"
• ❌ "Sarah"

3. Link Contacts

• Connect providers to contacts
• Quick access to phone/email
• Automatic updates if contact changes

4. Add Detailed Notes

Include useful information:

• Pickup/return times
• Special handling instructions
• Insurance requirements
• Account numbers

5. Regular Review

• Check provider assignments before export
• Verify rental dates are current
• Update contact information
• Archive unused custom providers

6. Export Strategy

• Export by provider for vendor coordination
• Include contact information
• Generate separate PDFs for clarity
• Keep master list with all providers

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Troubleshooting

Provider Not Showing in List

Issue: Custom provider doesn't appear in selector

Solutions:

1. Check if provider was saved
2. Refresh the page
3. Verify provider is not archived
4. Check filter settings

Provider Export Empty

Issue: PDF export for specific provider shows no items

Solutions:

1. Verify items are assigned to that provider
2. Check if filters are excluding items
3. Ensure export settings include provider
4. Try regenerating PDF

Cannot Delete Provider

Issue: Delete option grayed out

Reasons:

• System providers cannot be deleted
• Provider has assigned items
• Provider is used in active projects

Solutions:

1. Reassign or remove provider from all items
2. Archive projects using this provider
3. For custom providers, use "Reassign All" option

Provider Colors Not Showing

Issue: Colors not visible in UI

Solutions:

1. Check color contrast settings
2. Verify color was saved
3. Try different color
4. Check for CSS conflicts

Contact Link Broken

Issue: Provider shows "Contact not found"

Solutions:

1. Check if contact was deleted
2. Re-link provider to contact
3. Update contact information
4. Remove contact link if no longer needed

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Related Documentation

• User Guide - Comprehensive user documentation
• PDF Export - Export options and customization
• Contact Management - Managing contacts
• Settings - Provider configuration

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Last Updated: 2026-09-08 Version: 0.790.2