About this plugin
Asset Lending Manager is an open-source WordPress plugin that helps any organization manage shared physical assets and internal lending workflows.
Designed for clubs, associations, schools, public bodies, libraries, laboratories, makerspaces, and any group that loans equipment or materials to its members.
Members can browse available assets and submit loan requests, while operators and administrators can manage assignments and loan history.
Born within an association of amateur astronomers to manage telescopes and equipment, it is published as a general-purpose tool usable by any organization.
Requires the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin (free version) to store and manage asset details.
Features
- Asset and kit management (a kit is a group of items lent together as a set)
- Public browsing page with search, taxonomy filters, QR labels, and QR scanner lookup
- Loan request workflow with approval, rejection, direct assignment, and configurable cancellation of competing pending requests
- Optional contact form to send email messages to the current asset owner
- Email notifications for the main loan workflow events
- Frontend asset state management for operators: set maintenance or retired, force-return on-loan assets, and restore assets to available
- Full loan history, plus a dedicated full asset history page for operators via [almgr_asset_history]
- Two user roles included: Member and Operator
- Read-only JSON REST API at /wp-json/almgr/v1/ for asset list, asset detail, member list, and member assets
- Back-office Tools page (ALM → Tools) with Import, Export, and Utilities tabs
- Users and assets CSV import/export, including kit components and their ACF fields in asset CSV files
- Translation-ready
Requirements
Requires the Advanced Custom Fields plugin (free version is sufficient):
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Advanced Custom Fields (ACF®)
The plugin registers its ACF field group automatically, so no manual field setup is needed.
Loan Workflow
- A member browses the available assets.
- A loan request is submitted for a selected asset.
- Notification emails are sent to the requester and, when applicable, to the current owner.
- The current owner can approve or reject the request.
- On approval, the asset is marked as on loan and the new borrower is recorded.
- Operators and admins can also directly assign any asset that is not retired or under maintenance, without a prior request (when direct assignment is enabled).
- Operators can force-return an on-loan asset to available, or restore an asset from maintenance or retired back to available.
- All decisions, assignments, and state changes are recorded in loan history.
Credits
This plugin bundles the following third-party JavaScript libraries:
- qrcode-generator by Kazuhiko Arase (http://www.d-project.com/), MIT License
- jsQR by cozmo (https://github.com/cozmo/jsQR), Apache License 2.0
Both licenses are compatible with GPLv2 or later. License files are included in assets/js/vendor/.