How to Generate a PDF Overview of Your Reserved Assets (Bookings)

Generating a PDF of Your Booking / Reservation

The bookings feature allows you to pre-book assets from your available inventory. Whether you're preparing for a big event or just need to keep track of equipment loans, having a printable list can be incredibly useful. Here's how to generate a PDF overview:

1. Navigate to any booking in your Shelf account
2. Open the Actions dropdown in the top right
3. Choose Generate PDF
4. If your workspace has more than one PDF document, pick one from the Document dropdown. The preview reloads with that layout
5. Click Download PDF to save it

On the Bookings list, the row's More actions menu (three dots) has Generate PDF too, so you can print a booking without opening it. See the More actions menu.

The PDF is titled with the document and the booking, for example "Check-out receipt - Festival load-in". Shelf remembers the document you picked last in each workspace and offers it first next time.

The preview's own subtitle tells you how the list is ordered, for example "Assets are sorted by Status (descending)."

Tip: The PDF respects the search you've applied to the booking's asset list. If you search the asset list first — by name, asset ID, category, location, tags, or code — the generated PDF includes only the matching items. On a large booking, this lets you print a focused pull list (for example, just the items stored in one location) instead of the full asset list.

When a match belongs to a kit, the whole kit comes into the PDF with it, exactly as it does on screen. Searching for one lens prints every item in the camera kit that lens belongs to, so a pull list never asks someone to fetch half a kit. The totals at the bottom count only what the PDF shows.

What's Included in the PDF?

The Checklist, the document every workspace starts with, contains:

• Workspace name
• Booking name
• Custodian responsible for the booking
• Booking period (start and end dates/times)
• Booking description, when the booking has one (a booking without a description prints no empty Description row)
• The asset table, with a number, image, name, quantity, kit, category, location, and Code for every booked line. An asset's description prints under its row, cut at 300 characters with an ellipsis, so a long description does not take over the sheet
• Date of PDF generation

The header also prints the Total assets value of everything on the booking. Other documents can leave parts of this out, as described below.

PDF Documents: Saved Layouts for Different Jobs

One booking PDF often does several jobs: a pick list in the warehouse, a cross-check at return, a hand-over with a client, a priced list for the office. Instead of one fixed layout, a workspace keeps named PDF documents, and the person generating the PDF picks one by name.

Every workspace on a paid plan starts with two:

• Checklist: the full pull list described above. It is the default.
• Check-out receipt: a signed list of what went out. Rows are sorted A to Z, the booking description, the asset descriptions and the total value are left off, and signature lines for the custodian and the person issuing the gear (each with a date) print at the foot. It is the departure twin of the check-in receipt.

What a document decides

• Columns: Image, Qty, Kit, Category and Location can each be switched on or off. #, Name and Code always print, in a fixed order.
• Custom fields: up to 3 custom fields, each printed as its own column before Code. A multi-line text field prints under the asset instead, while the description row is on. An asset with no value prints an empty cell.
• Asset description under each asset: on or off.
• Group by: no grouping, or by category.
• Sort by: the same order as the booking page (status by default), or name A to Z with a kit's members kept together.
• Booking description and Total assets value lines in the header: on or off.
• Signature lines at the foot: on or off.

Code pictures are not part of a document: they follow the workspace's Print code images on PDFs switch (below) on every document.

Creating and editing documents

Owners and Administrators manage documents under Settings → General, in the PDF documents card:

1. Type a name in New document name (for example Client quote) and click Add document.
2. Choose the columns, custom fields, rows and header lines, then click Save document.
3. Use Duplicate to start from an existing layout, Make default to choose the document the dialog opens with, or Delete to remove one. A workspace always keeps at least one document; deleting the default makes another one the default.

Document names are unique in a workspace, ignoring capital letters.

If your workspace's plan does not include PDF documents, the card shows an upgrade note instead and every booking prints the Checklist, with no Document dropdown in the dialog.

The Code Column

The last column of the asset table is headed Code, and it prints three things: a tick box, a picture of the asset's code, and that code as text.

The code is whatever your workspace has chosen under Settings → General ▸ Preferred display code. A workspace set to SAM ID prints SAM-0042. A workspace on the default QR Code ID prints the QR id itself. A workspace with the alternative-barcodes add-on set to Code 128, Code 39, DataMatrix, External QR or EAN-13 prints that barcode's value. An asset whose edit page picks a specific barcode to display prints that barcode, whatever the workspace preference.

The picture is always the code printed under it. A Code 128 row prints a Code 128 barcode, a DataMatrix row a DataMatrix, an External QR row that external QR, so scanning the sheet reads the same value a person reads off it. QR Code ID and SAM ID rows print the asset's Shelf QR, because a SAM ID is not a code a scanner reads; the text under it is the SAM ID.

Barcodes print at their true size, so they scan from paper. A value too long to fit the column that way prints as text only, with no picture: roughly a Code 128 value over 11 letters (or over 22 digits), a Code 39 value over 8 characters, or an External QR link longer than about 200 characters. A value its format refuses, such as an EAN-13 that is not 12 or 13 digits, also prints as text only. The sheet does not say why a picture is missing. If one row has none while the others do, its value is too long for a printed barcode or not valid for its format; if no row has one, the Print code images on PDFs switch below is off.

If an asset has no code of the preferred type, the sheet prints its QR Code ID with its Shelf QR, and puts the type name underneath in small text, so a picker holding the paper can tell a fallback from the real thing. On screen that same explanation lives in a tooltip, and paper has no hover.

Because the code is printed, a sheet can be matched to a shelf by eye. Before this, a workspace whose physical labels carry SAM IDs got a sheet with a QR square and nothing readable on it.

Turning the code pictures off

The picture on the checklist is the same code as the sticker on the item. A phone cannot tell them apart, so scanning the sheet during a pack-out records a scan without anyone walking to the equipment, which is the opposite of what the scan is for.

If that matters to your team, an Owner or Administrator can switch the image off for the whole workspace:

1. Open Settings → General.
2. Find the Code images on PDFs row, described as "Control whether each item's code is printed as a picture on booking documents and the audit receipt."
3. Turn Print code images on PDFs off.
4. Click Save.

The switch is on by default, so nothing changes until you turn it off. It applies to every sheet that prints code pictures: every booking PDF document and the audit receipt. The booking's check-in receipt never prints one. It is a workspace setting rather than a checkbox on the print dialog: a control the person taking the shortcut can untick before printing is not a control.

With the pictures off, the tick box and the code stay and the rows get shorter. The sheet is still matchable by eye, which is why the printed code and this switch arrived together.

This setting is available on every plan. It is not gated behind an add-on.

Printing the Sheet

The checklist prints at full size on A4: the table fits inside the page margins, so the browser does not shrink the sheet to fit and barcodes keep the size they need to scan. A row never splits across a page break, an asset's description row moves to the next page together with its asset, and the column headers repeat at the top of every page. Asset photos print as plain images, so rows far down a long booking print their photo rather than a grey loading box.

One Row per Booked Line

The table prints one row per booked line rather than one per asset. For individually tracked gear the two are the same thing: one item, one row.

It matters for quantity-tracked stock, where the same pool can reach a booking from more than one direction. Say a booking holds 10 sandbags: 4 booked loose, 3 carried in by kit Grip A, and 3 by kit Grip B. The PDF prints three sandbag rows, of 4, 3, and 3, each naming its own kit (the loose row leaves the Kit column empty).

Practical Applications

Users have found numerous valuable applications for this feature:

1. Pre-packing Checklist: Use the PDF as a checklist when packing items for transport, ensuring nothing is left behind.
2. Physical Sign-off: Print the Check-out receipt document for the hand-over: it carries signature lines for the custodian and the person issuing the gear. For the return, print the check-in receipt instead: it records what came back, when, and who received it, and it has its own signature lines.
3. Offline Backup: Keep a physical record of assets checked out, useful where digital access might be limited.
4. Inventory Audits: Quickly cross-reference physical assets against the booking list during audits or spot checks.
5. Client or office copies: Save a document with the columns that audience needs, for example a Client quote that prints a price custom field and groups the items by category.

Best Practices

• Generate the PDF shortly before the booking start date to ensure up-to-date information.
• Consider keeping both digital and physical copies for redundancy.
• Check items in by scanning the label on the item, not the picture on the sheet. Both encode the same asset, so scanning the paper records a check-in for gear nobody has looked at. If your team is likely to take that shortcut, turn Print code images on PDFs off in Settings → General and work from the printed code instead.