Schools, nonprofits & equipment libraries

Lend it to a hundred people. Get it all back.

Accountability for gear that goes home with students and volunteers - without an enterprise price tag or an enterprise’s worth of paperwork.

A single item checked out to a borrower with a due date - custody, without a sign-out sheet.

Sound familiar?

Volunteers and students borrow gear all week, and there’s no budget for enterprise asset software - nor the patience for it. You need to know who has what and when it’s due, with accountability but no bureaucracy.

A day with ItemTally

Lend, track, return.

Lend it out

A student or volunteer takes a camera, a laptop, a power tool. Scan the item, check it out to their name, set a return date, get a signature - thirty seconds at the desk.

See who has what

The register shows every item that’s out and who’s holding it. When something’s a person’s responsibility it reads violet, so accountability is visible, not filed away.

Get it back

They scan it back on return. Anything overdue turns amber so a gentle reminder goes out - no clipboard, no honesty-box, no lost inventory at year end.

What does the work here

Four things a lending library leans on.

The Logbook

Check an item out to a named person with a due date and a signature. Accountability without a bureaucracy - exactly what lending to a crowd needs.

How it works →

The free Shelf tier

€0 fits the budget you actually have. One person can run a real lending library on the free tier - items are never metered, so a big catalogue never costs more.

See pricing →

Labels

A QR sticker on every item makes check-out a single scan - quick enough for a volunteer to learn in a minute at a busy desk.

How it works →

Mobile app

Run the whole thing from a shared phone or tablet at the counter. No dedicated computer, no IT project, no licence per helper.

How it works →

No purchase orders, no invoices, no fines-and-fees engine - that’s fine. ItemTally handles who borrowed what and when it’s due; grants and budgets stay in your finance system. It’s a lending register, kept deliberately simple. Here’s exactly what we will and won’t build →

Honest answers

The questions this crew asks.

How does lending to students and staff work?

Check-out with a due date to any person - accounts optional. Overdue items surface on the Today page with one-tap reminders, and each person's page lists everything on their name with how long they've had it.

Semester-end collection is chaos. Does this help?

Two tools: the custody-by-person report (a printable sheet of who holds what) and possession checks - send everyone a link, they confirm or dispute from their phone, and only the genuinely missing things need chasing.

What do we put labels on - books, kits, devices?

Anything that leaves the room: QR labels print in sheets (Avery) or on a Brother roll, and every item gets its identity automatically. Scanning a label lands on the item with check-in one tap away.

We have no budget. What does free actually include?

Everything, for one writer: unlimited items, offline mobile, check-outs, counts, reports, CSV import/export. Paid plans only add more people who can write - €19/month flat for five. Items are never metered.

About ItemTally

The register, in plain words.

ItemTally is scan-first inventory for small businesses - stockrooms, crew vans, studios, workshops. It tracks the two kinds of things every real crew has in one register: quantity stock (cable ties, tape, boxes - with minimums and low-stock alerts) and unique gear (tools, cameras, laptops - with custody, due dates and thumb signatures).

Every change is a movement in an append-only ledger: stock in, stock out, adjust with a reason, hand to a person, count. The current number on any shelf is exactly the sum of its history - there's no way to quietly edit a quantity, which is what makes the register worth trusting.

The mobile app works fully offline - scanning, counting and adjusting in basements, vans and venues - and syncs itself when the signal returns. Offline is on every plan, including the free one.

Pricing is structural, not tiered: you pay for people who can write, never for items. Shelf is €0 forever (one writer, unlimited items); Stockroom is €19/month flat for a crew of five; Warehouse is €49/month flat, unlimited. Items are never metered on any plan - that's a signed, dated pledge, and your joining price never rises on you.

The exits are real: full CSV export on every plan, any day. The API is public and included - read keys are free everywhere - and a first-party MCP server lets Claude or ChatGPT answer questions from your register (writes always preview first and wait for a human yes).

What it deliberately isn't: an ERP. No sales orders, no invoices, no purchasing - the boundary is the product.

Start free See pricing Free forever for one person · no card, no trial clock

Start your lending library for €0.

Free forever for one person, items never metered - so a hundred-item catalogue costs exactly nothing.

Start free See the free tier

No card. No trial clock. Free forever for one person.