Our Products & Services
Getting Started
First Time Setup
Getting Started With Jobs
Getting Started with Ticketing
Setting Sonar up for Billing
Getting Started with Accounts
Getting Started with Inventory
Baseline Configuration
User Specific Resources
How To: Using Sonar's Customer Portal
Accounts
Account Types: Overview & Example Use Cases
Account Statuses: Overview & Example Use Cases
Account Management View: Overview
Scheduled Events: Overview & Use Cases
Notes & Tasks: Best Practices & Use Cases
Child Accounts: Best Practices & How Tos
Disconnecting an Account
Understanding the Affordable Connectivity Program
FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) Filings: How Sonar Can Help
Account List View: Overview
Specify Account ID upon Creation
Lead Intake Form Processing
Account Groups: Overview & Example Use Cases
CPUC Fixed Broadband Deployment by Address
Serviceable Addresses: Overview and Usage
FCC Data Exports: General Overview and Usage
Creating a New Account
Billing
Setting up Bank Account & Credit Card Processors
Billing Settings
Billing Defaults
Taxes Setup
General Ledger Codes: Overview
Services: Overview
Building a Data Service
Building Packages
Delinquency Billing Best Practices
Accounts in Vacation Mode
Batch Payments & Deposit Slips: Overview
Creating Discounts for Services and Packages
Setting Up Payment Methods and Taking Payments
Canadian ACH tool
Printed Invoice Batches: Overview
Delinquency Exclusions: Overview and Use Cases
Multi-Month Billing & Multi-Month Services
How to Take Bank Account Payments
Email Invoice Batch: Overview
Manual Transactions
ACH Batching: Overview
Billing Calculator
General Transactions: Best Practices
Usage Based Billing Policies: Overview and Usage
How to: Adding a Service to an Account
Usage Based Billing Policy Free Periods: Overview and Usage
Using Tax Exemptions - How To
Avalara: Overview & Setup
Print to Mail
Communication
Setting up an Outbound Email Domain
Triggered Messages: Setup
Call Logs: General Best Practices
Using the Mass Message Tool
Saved Messages: Overview
Message Categories: Overview & Use Cases
Phone Number Types: Overview and Use Cases
Email Variables & Conditions
Communication Tools: Overview
Trigger Explanations
Companies
How to: Setting Up a Company in Sonar
Managing Multiple Companies in Sonar: Best Practices
Rebranding your Sonar Instance
Financial
Contract Templates
Invoice Attachment Use Cases & PDF Examples
Invoice Messages: Overview & Use Cases
Invoices in Sonar: Examples, Creation & Contents
Integrations
Calix Integration: Overview
GPS Tracking Providers: Overview
Webhooks in Sonar: Basic PHP Example
How to Connect Cambium to your Sonar Instance
iCalendar Integration
RemoteWinBox - Integration with Sonar
External Marketing Providers
The Sonar Field Tech App
How to Connect Preseem to your Sonar System
Tower Coverage Integration: Overview
GoCardless Integration: Overview & Setup
Vetro FiberMap Integration: Overview
How to: Using Webhooks in Sonar
CrowdFiber Integration
Inventory
Setup of Inventory: Manufacturers, Categories, and Assignees
Inventory List View: Overview
Inventory Model Management: General Overview
Tracking and Using Consumable Inventory
Jobs
Job Types: Best Practices
Setting Up Schedules General Overview
Applying Task Templates to Jobs
Scheduling Week View: Overview
Example Jobs & Templates
Scheduling How-to: Creating and Booking a Job
Geofences: Overview
Edit Job Options
Jobs and Scheduling: Overview
Mapping
Misc.
Monitoring
Building a Monitoring Template
Pollers: General Overview, Deployment Strategy, Build Out & Setup
Building Alerting Rotations
Poller Troubleshooting
Networking
IP Assignments & Sonar
MikroTik: Setting Up a Sonar Controlled DHCP Server
IPAM: Basic Setup
MikroTik as an Inline Device: Integration With Sonar
MikroTik: Controlling Speeds
MikroTik: Controlling Access
PacketLogic: Integration With Sonar
Setting Up CoA Proxy
RADIUS: Building Reply Attributes
Data Usage Available Methods
Pulse, Polling, and PHP
Using Multiple Network Devices in Sonar
IPAM: Overview
Cable Modem Provisioning
LTE Integration
Assigning RADIUS Addresses
Controlling Customer Speeds with Sonar: General Overview
Sonar Flow
RADIUS: Build-Out & Integration with Sonar
Network Dashboard: Overview
Being Cloud Native
Netflow Integration: Overview
Building a Device Mapper
Sonar IP Addressing
Automating IP Assignments, Data Rates, and Network Access in Sonar
DHCP Delivery
Assigning an IP Address Using Sonar's IPAM: How to
Network Sites: Management View Overview
Building RADIUS Groups
Building Address Lists
Finding your OIDs
Purchase Orders
Release Notes
Reporting
Understanding Sonar Reports
How To Enhance Your Reporting With Custom Field Data
Report Licenses
Sonar's Business Intelligence: Overview
Security
User Role Creation & Best Practices
Removing a Terminated Employee In Sonar
Password Policy In Depth
Application Firewall: General Overview and Best Practices
Users: Overview
Role Creation using GraphiQL
Sonar Billing
sonarPay
System
How to Best Use Global Search
How Your Data is Backed Up
How To Use GraphiQL to Understand the Sonar API
Frequently Used Terms
Sonar's Rich Text Editor
Mutations in the Sonar API
Notification Preferences
API Calls Using Third Party Applications: Personal Access Tokens
Auth0: Overview
The New Sonar API
Introducing the New Sidebar
Upgrading your Ubuntu OS - Customer Portal Upgrades
A Deeper Dive into the New Sonar API
Consuming the Sonar API
Filtering: Simple vs Advanced
Browser Compatibility and Minimum Hardware Requirements for Sonar
REST API Wrappers for V1 Compatibility
User Profile: Your Personal User Settings
SMS Notifications
Dynamic Time Zones in Sonar
System Settings: Overview
Troubleshooting the Customer Portal
Controlling Your Landing Page: Personal Preferences
Interacting with Files via the API
Getting Your Data into Sonar
Customizing Your Customer Portal
Ticketing
Ticketing: Overview
Canned Replies Examples & Templates
Canned Reply Categories
Inbound Mailboxes Example Build
Ticket Categories Best Practices & Example Build
Exploring Ticket Groups
Using Parent Tickets
How to Integrate Inbound Mailboxes with Slack
Advanced Ticketing Features
Voice
Working With the Sonar Team & Additional Resources
Sonar's Security Practices & Certifications
Sonar and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
Technical Security Overview
CyberSecure Canada Certification
Sonar's Security Strategies
Best Practices for Fast Tracking a Support Request
How Sonar Bills Your Instance
The Sonar Status Page
The Sonar Community Forum
Feedback Portal / Suggest a Feature
Sonar Casts Table of Contents
How to Request Termination of your Sonar Instance
Submitting Bugs vs. Feature Requests
Third Party Customer Support Referrals
Client Services Training Overview
Learning with Sonar: Tools and Resources
Table of Contents
- All Categories
- Inventory
- Tracking and Using Consumable Inventory
Tracking and Using Consumable Inventory
Updated
by Mitchell Paul-Soumis
Read Time: 5 mins
Basics of tracking consumable items
If you're familiar with the inventory system in Sonar, you'll know that new Inventory Models can be added as a "Generic" type. The Generic tag indicates the ability to add items to this model without defining fields, such as a Serial Number or MAC Address. The advantage of this approach is that it allows you to add traditionally difficult to track items without needless complexity. Below, we'll go through an example of how you might add and track a Generic Item
Scenario 1: Adding spools of Cat6A cable
In this example, we'll look at a very basic scenario where we need to add spools of Ethernet cable. We'll go through the steps that you would need to take in order to add the model, add the item, and make use of tracking. In order to follow along with this scenario, you'll need to have configured the administrative side of inventory, such as the Manufacturer and the Category.
- Add your Inventory Model. For this scenario, we'll name it "Cat6A Cable - 500' Spools", and select Monoprice as the manufacturer, along with "Cables" as the category.
- Once the Inventory Model is added, you can add items. These items will need an assignee and a quantity. For this scenario, we'll be assigning a spool to one of our technician's vehicles.

These steps cover the basics of adding a Generic Item, and in this scenario, we don't care about individual runs - when the spool is emptied by the technician, a new one would be assigned to the vehicle. This method, which can be implemented on other bulk consumable items, is the simplest method of tracking consumable items. For example, this same concept can be applied to:
- Boxes of screws
- Containers of cable management clips
- Boxes of RJ-45 terminators
Advanced tracking methods
An alternative use case for tracking consumable items is wanting to track the most minute details of your inventory items. In the below scenario, we'll cover a few examples of how you can use the Generic Items system to keep track of consumable items as they're consumed.
Scenario 2: Tracking spools of cable by the foot
As with the previous scenario, we'll be adding spools of Cat6A Ethernet cable for tracking. Where this scenario differs from the last is that we'll be tracking these spools by the foot. The steps below will outline how you can do this.
- Add the Inventory Model. For this example, we'll be adding a model of cable manufactured by Monoprice, with the name "Cat6A bulk - by the foot"
- Once the model has been created, we'll proceed to add the item. For this example, we'll be assigning 500 units to one of our technician's trucks

- In order to consume this inventory, the technician would need to measure how many feet were used on a run during their job, and consume that many units as appropriate
At this point, let's take a look at what's happened to the Inventory Item itself. The Generic Inventory List view, when filtered down for our Monoprice "Cat6A bulk - by the foot", will reflect that there are now 473 remaining units assigned to the technician's truck, which indicates that 27 feet were used and consumed.

By tracking and consuming the inventory, we're not only tracking what gets used but exactly how much. Unfortunately, this method does have a couple of drawbacks:
- It's difficult to keep track of exactly where the inventory was consumed. For example, in the above scenario where the inventory was consumed on a job, there's no easy way to historically track where the inventory was consumed.
- You can optionally assign the inventory to the address or network site where the job was performed, then consume that inventory, however, this would result in an entity permanently listed under the consumable item with 0 units of inventory.
- You could alternatively record the consumed inventory on a custom field, but this would require additional manual processing on the part of the field technician
- A technician returning a partially used inventory item would make it difficult to accurately find that item without external tracking software. For example, let's assume technician "A" is returning 163 ft of cable to the warehouse. The box is then placed on the shelf and left for a month until someone wants to assign it to technician "B". The Inventory tracking in Sonar would not be able to direct you to the location this particular box is stored, as each unit would simply be lumped together under the Inventory Location.
However, this method does have a few advantages over the standard item tracking we explored in Scenario 1, especially when used in a non-traditional way.
- One advantage is for specific items, like boxes of screws - if a particular screw type is stored within a specific bin in your warehouse, by combining the count of consumable items with the bin, you'll always know when the amount of screws starts getting low, allowing you to top up and add more to that bin.
- Another advantage of using the more precise Consumable Item tracking is the reduction in duplicate purchases. By keeping very close track of the items as they're consumed in Sonar, it removes the guesswork from restocking key consumable items.
In summary, while most users will find the first method of tracking consumable inventory more than sufficient, there are still possible use cases for tracking consumable items with even more precision. You may find the best method is a combination of both depending of the nature of the item being tracked and consumed.