Locations and Stock
Locations are where your items live, and stock is how many you have in each one. Together they answer the two questions Gubbins exists to answer: what have I got? and where is it?
Where to find it: the location tree down the side of the Inventory screen.
Locations are hierarchical — a location can sit inside another, as deep as you like:
Garage → Shelf A → Bin 3
Each location can have:
- A name — a room, shelf, drawer, box, or anywhere else things live.
- A colour — a swatch that tints the location and the cards of items stored in it, so the grid reads at a glance.
- A description — free notes about the location (what it holds, how to get to it, a link). It shows as a tooltip when you hover the location in the tree, and — when that location is selected — as a panel above the item list.
- A parent — the location it sits inside.
Selecting a location filters the inventory to what it holds, including everything nested beneath it, and shows the location's description (if it has one) above the items. Select All items to clear the filter.
Above the tree is a search box. Type into it and the tree narrows to the locations that match, with the branches leading down to them opened for you — so you can jump straight to a deeply nested bin without expanding anything by hand.
Search matches the whole path, not just the location's own name, and every word you type has
to appear somewhere on it. So garage bin finds Garage → Shelf A → Bin 3, and typing just
garage narrows the tree to the Garage and everything inside it.
Clear the box (with the ✕, or by pressing Escape while typing in it) and the tree comes
back exactly as you left it — searching never changes which branches you had open.
💡 Tip Search combines with the tag filter below it: pick a tag and type a name to narrow by both at once.
ℹ️ Note Very large location trees are drawn a screenful at a time as you scroll, so the sidebar stays quick no matter how many locations you have. Search and the keyboard still reach every one of them.
A location can also carry photos, with named regions drawn on them, so an item can point at exactly where on a shelf it sits. See Location photos & regions.
💡 Tip Descriptions support Markdown — headings, bold, lists, tables, and links all render, in both the hover tooltip and the panel above the item list. Handy for access notes or a link to a supplier.
💡 Tip The tree is fully keyboard-navigable: arrow keys move between locations, Left/Right collapse and expand, and Enter selects. Great for quick filtering without reaching for the mouse.
💡 Tip You can drag an item card onto a location to move its stock there — a fast way to tidy up after a reorganise. On a touchscreen, press and hold the card briefly until it lifts, then drag it onto the location; a quick swipe still scrolls the list as usual.
The key idea: Gubbins tracks quantity separately in each location. If you have 200 screws on Shelf A and 50 in the Kitchen, that's one item with a total on-hand of 250 — but the app remembers the 200/50 split. Adjust the count where the stock physically is, and the item's total keeps itself correct automatically.
ℹ️ Note An item's total quantity is always the sum of its per-location stock — you never edit the total directly, you edit stock somewhere.
A transfer moves quantity from one location to another. The total on-hand doesn't change — the stock just now lives somewhere else. This is how you record moving a batch of parts from receiving to a shelf, or loading tools into a van.
A location can hold custom field values of its own, and offer them to everything stored
inside it. If a whole cabinet holds Ryobi tools, set Manufacturer = Ryobi once on the cabinet
instead of typing it onto every item.
Open the location's Edit dialog and find Inheritable fields:
- Pick a field from the list (fields are defined under Categories & schemas — see Custom fields & capabilities).
- Give it a value.
- Tick Offer to items here.
Items in that location — and in any location nested inside it — can then choose Inherit for that field instead of entering their own value. It's opt-in per item, and the value stays live: change it on the location and every item inheriting it updates straight away.
Nested locations override their parents, so a value on Cabinet A beats the one on the
Workshop above it.
ℹ️ Note Setting a value and offering it are separate steps. Leave Offer to items here unticked to keep a value as the location's own detail — a shelf's load rating, say — without the items inside picking it up.
The full behaviour, including what happens when you withdraw an offer, is covered in Custom fields & capabilities.
A location can be given a capacity, after which Gubbins shows a fullness gauge — handy for knowing when a shelf or bin is running out of room before you over-fill it.
A location can be set to report everything stored in it as dead stock once it goes unused — so you can keep an eye on a whole cupboard without visiting each item. Set Dead-stock reporting to Report when editing the location, and it applies to its sub-locations too.
You can also give the location its own idle threshold — how long is "too long" here — overriding the global default for everything inside it. Handy when one place keeps different time to the rest: deep storage might only be worth flagging after a year.
Any individual item can override what its location decided. See ABC, turnover & aging for the full picture.
Not everything that holds items stays put. A toolbox, a camera bag, a first-aid kit or a van all travel around — and Gubbins handles them without any special "mobile" setting. The trick is that a location tracks what is inside it, not where it sits on a map, so a portable container is simply a location like any other:
- Make the container a location — nest it wherever it normally lives (e.g. Garage → Camera bag).
- Give it a matching type so it reads at a glance: Box, Bag or Vehicle all carry their own icon.
- Store the items inside it, just as you would on a shelf.
Because Gubbins records containment rather than a physical position, picking the bag up and carrying it out of the door changes nothing — its contents are still "in the bag". If you want to record that the whole container has moved home for good, drag it to a new parent in the tree; if you're lending it out with its contents, a loan can be made out to the container's location.
💡 Tip A container is a great place to use capacity (below) — a first-aid kit or grab-bag with a set number of slots shows its fullness gauge, so you can see at a glance whether it's fully stocked before you head out.
Beneath each location, stock can be split further into batches & lots — useful when different deliveries have different expiry dates, so Gubbins can consume the oldest first.
- Core concepts — how items, stock and locations relate.
- Batches & lots — expiry tracking and first-expiry-first-out.
- Cycle counts & audit day — checking that on-hand counts match reality, location by location.
- ABC, turnover & aging — dead-stock reporting, and how a location's setting passes down to the items inside it.