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Tracker groups
A tracker group is a category of things you keep track of — Groceries, Generators, Block A flats, Haulage fleet. The individual things inside it are tracked items.
A group holds four independent lists, and nothing couples them:
- its items
- the monitored parameters its items are read for
- the properties its items are described by
- its balances
A group may hold all four.
Creating one
Tracked Groups → Add Group. The settings the form asks for decide what the group's screens will offer for the rest of its life, so it is worth taking them slowly.
Two settings can never be changed
Global Metrics and Equipment are fixed at creation. Getting either wrong means creating a new group and moving the items across. Everything else on the form can be changed later.
| Setting | Changeable later | What it decides |
|---|---|---|
| Global Metrics | No | The group holds no items at all — only formulas computed across other groups. It can therefore carry neither balances nor item properties. Do not reach for it just to hold a total. |
| Equipment | No | Marks the group as machinery, vehicles or plant, which is what lets its items carry an equipment type and a service record. |
| Figures come from forms | Yes | Presentation only. On, the parameter rows are not asked for and the group starts with no items. Off, the parameter rows are asked for. |
| Items | Acts once | A generator, not a count — see below. |
| Access and Departments | Yes | Access is the whitelist. Departments are a display lens — a new group is filed only where you file it, and does not inherit yours. A Global Metrics group left in no department shows under every department; file it to show it under those alone. |
| Description | Yes | The caption under the group's name wherever it is listed. |
The Items field creates placeholders
Set Items to 4 and the group is created holding four placeholder items named <first 11 characters of the group name>-1 through -4.
That is useful for four identical pumps. It is wrong for anything you intend to name, because placeholder items are ordinary items — nothing distinguishes them — so a store created with Items: 200 starts with two hundred items called site store-1 and somebody has to delete them all before importing the real list.
Set Items to 0 for anything with real names
Ticking Figures come from forms sets it to 0 for you.
Which kind of group is this?
The tick labelled Figures come from forms is how a group says whether its figures are counted from paperwork (a balance) or read off the thing itself (a monitored parameter). Most groups want one or the other.
- A shop selling phone cases needs no reading of a phone case; the paperwork is the whole truth.
- A weather station recording rainfall has no stock to move.
A group that takes a count against each item — a stocktake — is not a balances group. Leave the tick off and set the parameter's Goal to Reading, which drops the Plan field. There is no target to plan against, only what was found.
When a group should do both
Both mechanisms on one group is supported, not a workaround. It is worth it in exactly two shapes.
The reading is a second opinion on the same thing
Head office knows there should be 1,800 litres in the diesel tank: 5,000 delivered, 3,200 issued. Somebody also walks out with a dipstick and reads 1,640.
Both describe the same diesel. In one group they sit on one screen and the 160-litre gap becomes visible — and that gap is the figure the operation actually cares about. Neither number accuses anyone on its own; 1,800 looks fine and so does 1,640. Split across two groups you have both numbers in the app and still no reconciliation, because nothing joins them.
Same shape: a grain silo weighed against a level sensor, a cash float against till receipts, a scrap yard's delivery notes against a weighbridge reading.
The reading explains what happens to the stock
The fridge in a shop. Milk, yoghurt and cheese are stock — bought, sold, counted. Fridge temperature is not stock at all; nobody sells a degree. But it is the single thing most likely to destroy the value of everything in that fridge.
In one group, the temperature log and the write-off taken on Monday are one story rather than two.
Same shape: a pharmacy fridge and its vaccines, a warehouse's humidity and the cement in it, a generator's running hours and the fuel drawn to feed it.
The test
Ask both questions. A yes to either means one group:
Is this reading a second opinion on stock I already count? Then the gap between the two is worth having.
Does this reading explain what happens to that stock? Then they belong on one screen.
Neither, and they are two groups. Cleaning chemicals and the borehole water level belong together only in the sense that both belong to Facilities — which is not a relationship between the data. Put them in one group and every mop head in the catalogue is offered a "water level" reading field, for nothing.
Two groups is the cheap answer and usually the right one.
Setting up a mixed group
The whole friction is on one screen: group settings hides the parameter section while Figures come from forms is ticked, and ticking it clears the parameter rows from the form.
That clearing is display only. Saved parameters are not deleted by it — a parameter is only removed by its own delete action — so they survive the tick and come back when it is unticked.
| What you want | Do this |
|---|---|
| Parameters and item properties | Leave the tick off. Item properties are offered on any saved non-global group regardless. |
| Parameters and balances | Tick it on, define the balances, untick it. The balances dialog stays available afterwards, and the parameter rows return. |
Afterwards the group's items page offers both sets of actions.
Things a setter-up should not hide
- Parameters belong to the group, not to individual items. The reading screen offers the group's whole parameter list against whichever item is opened. Put 300 products and two generators in one group and every product is offered "running hours". Recording stays optional per item so nothing breaks, but the screen gets noisy — and any statistic on that parameter spans the group.
- There is no per-item parameter subsetting. If that noise is unacceptable, the answer is two groups.
- Balance alert rules read item properties; parameter alerts do not. A rule on a balance can compare against a per-item threshold such as
{onHand} < {reorderLevel}. A reading's alerting is the parameter's own. The two do not see each other — so the diesel-tank gap above is read by a person and not raised by a rule. - Nothing computes that gap for you. The book figure and the read figure sit on one screen and are compared by eye.
The order to build in
- Create the group. Settle Global Metrics and Equipment now; they are permanent.
- Set Items to 0 unless you genuinely want placeholders.
- Add the item properties — before importing items, so an import can carry those columns.
- Add the items.
- Add the parameters, and define the balances.
- Only then the forms that move the stock — see Cycles.
Steps 3 and 4 are in that order for a reason: properties added after the items exist are blank on every item already there, and filling them in is a per-item job.