Consumables & categories

A consumable is a stock-counted supply — cables, adapters, toner, screws. Unlike an asset, which lazyit tracks one piece at a time, a consumable is just a quantity on hand: you care about how many you have, not which one. The list lives under Consumables in the sidebar.

Add a consumable

Open Consumables and choose New consumable. A consumable has:

• Name — required, e.g. USB-C to HDMI adapter.
• SKU — optional part number. It is shown in monospace and is searchable, but does not have to be unique-looking; it just has to be unique among your live consumables.
• Category — optional grouping (see below). Picking one is what makes the Category filter on the list useful.
• Reorder threshold — optional. When the on-hand count drops to this number or below, the item is flagged as low stock. See Low-stock alerts.
• Unit — the unit of measure (units, meters, boxes…). It is a plain label that rides along with the count everywhere it is shown; it does not change any maths.
• Description and Notes — optional free text.

Stock does not start as a field you type. A new consumable begins at 0 on hand, and the count only ever moves through stock movements — never by editing the consumable. See Stock movements.

The list

The consumables list shows the name, category, current Stock, unit, SKU and when each item was last updated. The stock figure is colour-coded:

• Green — in stock.
• Amber — low stock (at or below the reorder threshold).
• Red — out of stock (0 on hand).

You can search by name or SKU, and filter by Category or by Low stock only. Each row also carries the quick −1 / +1 buttons for adjusting the count in place.

Categories

Categories (Cables, Adapters, Peripherals, Office supplies, Other, …) are an optional grouping you manage yourself. They are not set up on the consumable form — you create and edit them under Settings → Taxonomies, on the Consumables tab. lazyit ships a small starter set; rename, add to or remove it to suit your estate.

A few things worth knowing:

• A consumable can have one category, or none.
• Deleting a category does not delete its consumables. Each consumable that pointed at it simply becomes uncategorised — nothing is lost. (This differs from some other parts of lazyit that block a delete while things still reference the item.)
• Categories are soft-deleted and a deleted name is freed for reuse, so you can recreate or restore one later without a clash.

Editing, cloning and removing

From a consumable’s detail page or its row menu you can Edit, Clone or Delete it.

• Clone opens a new consumable pre-filled from the original. The SKU is cleared and the stock starts at zero — handy for stocking a near-identical part.
• Delete is a soft delete: the consumable is archived, not erased, and its movement history is preserved. Administrators can switch the list to the archived view and Restore it.