Learn more
What is VolunShare?
VolunShare is an app that is made for running and managing a storage facility that lends out stuff to people. It has many different tools to get a good overview over people, items and lend-outs, so the processes will go as fluently as possible.
It is very visual based, everything has been made to make it visually understandable. It is also spatially based, in the sense that all pages animates to each other, so you can feel where you are in your workflow.
Also, the app is free! It is even ad-less! Download the app and start organizing. This app is suitable for any company, organization, school or university, or even neighborhoods that wants or needs to share items amongst a group of people. Add items, add borrowers, print out codes to put on items and start lending out items. The app will be ready for you to lend out stuff to people in just a few minutes! You could also put a lot of time into the app to get very organized, if you wish.
There will be a cheap subscription option, but this adds just some small tools that may be suitable for some. Everything you need happens in the free version of the app. If you wish, you could expand the experience by connecting the app with Microsoft Teams, or with Google Docs, or with Trello, without cost.
The subscription option would give you the option to host a personal page for your group, company or organization at VolunShare.net for minimum 10$ a month, where you can have a professional overview over what you have in the storage that can be lent out, what their status are, have manuals, illustrations, images, information of all sorts, and more. This is coming soon.
Your own page would also house a web-based camera scanner, so you can give customers the link to scan whatever they choose to borrow by themselves. No need for you to follow them around and scan for them. A last checkup might be good though.
Here people could also do future bookings for items, which would be fed right into the rest of your system.
The app consists of 8 pages:
Lend-out list
A simple list of all lend-outs. This is the first page you’ll see after login, and it will show who borrowed what, until what date, and how many items that has been lent-out, and how many has been delivered back to you.Clicking one of these lend-outs will show you all info about lend-out.
Item list
This app is made specifically to have a great overview over all items, so there is no confusion. Every item has a name, a code, and a category, which is used to get a simpler overview over the items when needed. Each item will have their own status, their own info if desired, it will show meta-info, status history, and more. If the item is in a lend-out, that lend-out and the borrower will be shown here as well.
Borrower list
A list of all borrowers. If you’re running a university, perhaps you want to import a list of all students of a class here, or perhaps the whole school. Or, you can wait to add them till when they want to lend-out something, so you don’t have an overload of people. Nevertheless, for every borrower you can add a name, mail address (required), optionally a phone number, and who they are associated to you. Perhaps they’re a teacher in Economics, or they’re a “Student in Engineering starting 2021”.
Print QR or Barcode page
Barcodes and/or QR codes will simplify your workflow a lot. The print page will create a printable paper with any QR code or Barcode you want to print out, that you can tape or laminate onto your items. This way, you can easily scan these items to get their status, or when you’re creating a lend-out you can scan all the items you need in a short notice.
Lend-out page
Then there is the page for creating a new lend-out. If you have printed and placed QR or Barcodes on all the items (which we recommend), then this will be a dream. If desired, even borrowers can have a QR code, which can be placed on their student card if they have one, or something else they usually have with them. Scanning all these items will then only take seconds, and all you then need to do is to add a date of retrieval, and save.There are many options here as well; If an item has lost its code, you can easily find the code in the dropdown list and add it to the lend-out. You can also create a new item or new borrower here while you’re creating the lend-out. Keep in mind, if you go out from the lend-out page, progress will be lost. So remember to save the lend-out first, it can be edited later.
To-do and info page
We also have some features to help you organize even more. From any place of the app you can add a to-do, and it will end up on this page. Either referencing a lend-out, item or borrower, or just being a plain to-do describing a task. You can then eventually check the task when it is done. If you have added the VolunShare subscription, you can then also add who does what. In that way you can easily assign a task to someone.
There is also two other tabs, one for info and one for our website. There you can access any information you’ll need as you go.
User page
A page for the user that has logged into the app. Here you can manage your own information, and if you’re on a device shared by multiple people, you can manage between different log-ins here. You can also add multiple databases if you wish. They will be saved on your device only, but with a VolunShare subscription you can upload the database to our servers so it can be shared with others.
Settings page
There are not many settings needed for such a simple app, but they are still powerful:
- You can import a CSV or TXT file, that contains a long list of for example borrowers or items. You can change what separates the columns, and you can skip separation with singular quotes or double quotes. Look at the example in our import tutorial to see how it looks like.
- In case of an error in the app, or with import, or perhaps in connection with a server database or with any of the connected services, if things in your database has been duplicated, or two items happen to have the same code, that can be edited as well. Click “Check for duplicates”, and you’ll be given a tool to clean up any errors that may have happened.
- Connect your app with Microsoft Teams or Sharepoint, with Google Docs and or sheets, or with Trello to get the information as close to your current workflow as possible. Future integration might also be Monday, and feel free to suggest to us more platforms for us to integrate with!
About Us
The app was created by Didrik Bjerkomp, a worker at a university in Oslo, Norway. It originated in his job with managing a film-equipment storage for film-students, where an effective and good app was very much needed.
The app became a hobby to make the work easier, but he quickly realised that multiple other lend-out services in Oslo also needed the product, and this escalated to many more. He then started a company to run the services for the app.
There has also been a desire for this app to be used in neighbourhoods to save on resource depletion and cost, to help the environment. Many items that people have at home is used rarely, and especially in poorer areas, this app will make it very easy to lift the standard of living there, by sharing the costs. VolunShare will also help with repair tips.
Volunshare 