The Serial Workbench is where you track individual tagged units through their working life — scanned in, sent out to a vendor, repaired, written off, or put back on the shelf. It shows what is off the shelf right now, how long it has been gone, and what upcoming orders are going to need.
It applies to serialized products only, where each unit carries its own serial number or barcode. To see where your units were on a past date, use Serials Tracking Report, and to trace one unit through its orders use Serial Number Usage History Report.
Where to Find It
Inventory → Serial Workbench
One strip of tabs runs across the top and carries you through the whole feature:
Scan & Update — collect units and change their status
Status Watchlist — what is off the shelf, and for how long
Coming Up — what upcoming orders need against what is on the shelf
Processing Batches — stock handed to an outside vendor. This one is a page of its own rather than a tab, because receiving a consignment needs the room.
The clock icon at the far right opens Status Change History — every status change across the company, newest first, so you can trace who moved what and when.
What the Statuses Mean
Every unit sits in exactly one of four statuses:
Available — on the shelf and rentable
Processing — away being cleaned, laundered or serviced. Nothing is wrong with it, it is just not here. Units sent out on a processing batch sit here until they come back.
Damaged — needs repair. Setting a unit to Damaged opens a quarantine record, which is what holds the unit out of stock and what a work order is raised against.
Unavailable — written off as unrepairable or lost. This is the same thing as marking an item Unrepairable or Lost on a return: the stock count drops. Setting the unit back to Available restores it.
A fifth state, Rented Out, is not something you set — Rentopian works it out from your orders. A unit with a customer shows as On rent — locked and cannot change status until the order is returned, so a unit can never be written off while it is still out earning.
Scan & Update
This tab is where you tell Rentopian what has happened to a set of units. You build a Working List, then apply one status to everything on it. Units reach the list three ways:
Scan an RFID tag or a barcode
Type a serial number, barcode or product name into the search box
Add them from the Status Watchlist, by clicking a count and choosing Add to Working List
Units are grouped by product. Click the count beside a product to open it and pick individual serials.
Two modes sit above the scan box. Collect to list adds every scan to the Working List so you can review everything before anything changes — use this until you trust the flow. Apply on scan applies a status you choose up front to each unit the moment it is scanned, which is faster when you are working through a pile of stock that is all going the same way. A running count of scanned, applied and skipped sits beside the box.
To change a status, tick the units, choose the status under Set Status To, add an optional Note — something like "batch 44" makes the history readable months later — and click Apply Status.
Rentopian asks before anything that moves your stock count or undoes existing work. You are warned before writing units off, before releasing units that are held in a quarantine, and when the units are already promised to orders that have not gone out yet, in which case those orders are listed first so you can check them before leaving them short.
Status Watchlist
The watchlist answers one question: what is off the shelf, and how long has it been gone? Products are listed oldest first, so what is quietly stuck rises to the top. Available and Rented Out are hidden by default — use the chips above the table to turn statuses on and off.
Each row shows the product, the status, and:
Quantity — how many units. Click the number to see and pick the individual serials.
At Vendor — how many of them a vendor is physically holding, and who has them
Oldest In Status — the serial that has been waiting longest, and since when
Longest Wait — how long that has been in days, highlighted once it passes a week and more strongly past a fortnight
From the unit list you can add serials straight to the Working List or set their status on the spot, so chasing something up does not mean starting again on another tab.
Coming Up
Coming Up compares what upcoming orders need against what is on the shelf right now, so units still out at a vendor can be chased back in time. Nothing here blocks a booking — it is a heads-up, not a restriction.
Choose a window of 10, 15, 30 or 60 days, and each product shows:
Needed — the most units wanted at the same time anywhere in the window, not the total across it, and the date they are first needed by. Click the number to see the orders driving it.
In Stock — units on the shelf now, with anything already out with a customer taken off
In Processing — units away being processed, including how many are at a vendor and who has them
Short By — the gap, where there is one
Only show what is short or in processing is ticked by default, so the tab opens on the products worth looking at. Untick it to see everything in the window.
Processing Batches
A processing batch is a consignment of stock handed to an outside vendor — a laundry, a cleaner, a repairer. It records what went out, who has it, when it is due back and what came back. Units on an open batch stay in Processing until they are received or written off.
Send stock out either from Scan & Update, by selecting units and choosing Send to Vendor, or from the batches page with New Batch. A batch needs a Vendor; the Reference — the vendor's own ticket number — and Expected Back date are optional.
The list page opens on open batches, with four figures across the top: Out At Vendors, Overdue (past the date the vendor was given, so late by promise rather than by age), Lost, and Turnaround. Below it, Out At Vendors summarises what is still out grouped by product and vendor.
Open a batch and you get a running summary of sent, back, lost and still out, plus the items on it. Scanning here has two modes, and the mode decides what a scan does: Scan to receive books items back in and only accepts what is still out on this batch, while Scan to add puts more items on the batch and sends them out. Scan something that is not on the batch and Rentopian says so and tells you which mode to switch to, rather than failing silently.
If a unit finds its own way back to the shelf — someone sets it to Available on the workbench rather than scanning it in on the batch — Rentopian settles its line on the open consignment anyway and tells you which batch it booked against, closing that batch if nothing else was left. That keeps a vendor from appearing to hold stock that is already back on your shelf.
The actions on a batch:
Mark Returned — the units came back. They return to Available and to the shelf.
Mark Lost at Vendor — the vendor did not bring them back. The units are written off the stock count and the loss is recorded against that vendor, so you can see which vendors lose your stock.
Remove from batch — for something added by mistake before it went out. Only untouched lines can go; anything already received or written off stays as the record of what happened.
Cancel Batch — the whole consignment was a mistake. Everything still out comes back to Available.
Close Batch — the consignment is finished. A batch closes on its own once nothing is left outstanding, and it cannot be closed early while units are still out.
Damaged Units, Repairs and Write-Offs
Setting a unit to Damaged opens a quarantine record, which is what actually holds the unit out of stock and gives you something to work against. A damaged unit has three ways out:
Back to stock — set it to Available, or release it from the quarantine record. The return is recorded either way.
Through a work order — open the quarantine, pick the line and raise a work order for a vendor to repair it. Completing the work order is treated as the repair coming back: the quarantine closes, the units are released and the return is recorded.
Written off — if it cannot be repaired, set it to Unavailable. The stock count drops and the write-off stays on record.
Damage found at an event is recorded when the order comes back: tick Needs Repair against the unit on the return and it moves to Damaged with its quarantine record opened for you. A unit cannot be quarantined while a customer still has it, which is why this happens on the return rather than here. For a report of everything currently needing repair or written off, see Damaged Items Report.
Setting It Up
Three things need to be in place.
Serialized products. Individual units only exist for products marked as serialized with serial numbers or barcodes added, so until a product has serialized items none of its stock appears here.
Permissions. Access is granted per role under Roles → User Roles, in the Inventory group:
Serial Workbench — opens the page and its three tabs
Set Status — allows actually changing a status. Without it a user can look but not change.
Send to Vendor — allows sending units out on a consignment
Processing Batches — opens the batches page
The tab strip only offers pages a user is allowed to open, so a restricted role sees fewer tabs rather than errors.
Automatic processing on return. Set Send to Processing on Return on the categories or products that need cleaning between rentals. A product can follow its category with Inherit From Category or override it on its own. With it on, returned units land in Processing and appear on the watchlist until you scan them back in; with it off they go straight back to Available. Reverting a return rolls those statuses back with it.
Barcode scanning needs no setup — the search box accepts anything a handheld scanner types. RFID needs the reader, the Rentopian RFID app and the Allow RFID permission, covered in How and Where the RFID Scanner Works in Rentopian.
⚠️ What to Watch For
Only Unavailable changes your stock count. Processing and Damaged take a unit off the shelf but leave the count alone. Unavailable writes the unit off, exactly like Unrepairable or Lost on a return.
A unit on an active order cannot change status. Return the order first. This is why a rented unit can never be quietly written off.
A unit out at a vendor has to be received before it can be quarantined. Book it back in on its batch first.
A skipped unit always has a reason. Read the message rather than re-scanning — it tells you whether the unit is on rent, at a vendor, or already in that status.
Deleting a product does not strand work in progress. Units still carrying an open damage record, an unfinished write-off or a consignment at a vendor stay visible so that work can be finished, and the damage list marks them Product deleted. They never become rentable again.
With one active Location, the Location column is not shown. There is nothing to tell apart, so it is left off every table in this feature.
Need Help?
If you have questions about the Serial Workbench or Processing Batches, contact us at [email protected].