How to set up parent-child equipment

Some lab instruments are not standalone: they have subcomponents, modules, or accessories that need their own booking schedules or tracking records. Calira's parent-child equipment feature lets you model these relationships so your equipment directory reflects how instruments actually work in the lab.

This is useful for instruments like incubators with multiple shelves, different decks on a liquid handler, or discrete parts of larger automated systems.

When to use parent-child relationships

Use parent-child when:

• A single instrument has bookable subcomponents
• You want to track utilisation at both the system level and the component level
• Accessories belong to a specific instrument and should appear grouped in the directory

If an instrument is simply large or complex but always booked as one unit, you do not need parent-child; a single equipment entry is sufficient.

Setting up parent equipment

Creating new parent equipment

1. Go to Equipment overview in the main navigation
2. Click the Add Equipment button on the right
3. Select Single equipment
4. Change category to Parent equipment
5. Add Child equipment as required
6. Complete the rest of the details for the instrument
7. Click Create equipment

If required, Children can inherit properties from the parent.

Changing existing equipment to Parent equipment

1. Go to Equipment overview in the main navigation
2. Select the instrument you want to edit
3. Click over to the Details tab
4. Click Edit equipment
5. Click the category dropdown
6. Select Parent equipment
7. Click Save changes

Warning: this will permanently delete all past and future bookings associated with the instrument, and cannot be undone.

Adding child equipment

1. On the parent equipment's details page, look for the Children section
2. Click Add child
3. Fill in the child equipment details
4. Click Create child

Each child appears as a separate entry in the equipment directory but is visually grouped under the parent. Child equipment has its own:

• Booking calendar
• Asset ID and serial number 
• Documents and images
• Metadata and utilisation tracking

How parent-child affects reporting

In utilisation reports, child equipment appear as separate line items. You can filter by parent to see the combined usage of the full system, or view each subcomponent individually. This helps you identify which parts of a complex instrument are under-used or over-subscribed.

For other ways in which Calira makes it easy to manage equipment, see our product feature page.