If your sales team is building gear orders from scratch every single time, they’re doing more work than they need to. In a recent strategy session inside The Loop, LASSO’s Mel Baglio broke down the different product types in Inventory and how to use packages to speed up quoting, improve warehouse accuracy, and create a smoother handoff between your sales and ops teams.
Here’s the rundown.
Start With the Basics: Normal Items & Consumables
Before you build a single package, it helps to understand the two foundational product types in LASSO.
Normal items are anything you expect back in the warehouse after a show—consoles, cable, truss, fixtures. When returned, they count back into your inventory automatically.
Consumables are the opposite. Zip ties, gaff tape, batteries, duvetyne—anything you’re sending out and not expecting to come home. If you don’t return a consumable when you finalize a return sheet, LASSO depletes it from your inventory count automatically. No manual adjustments needed.
Getting these classifications right from the start keeps your inventory counts accurate and saves your warehouse team from chasing items that were never meant to come back.
Packages vs. Price Packages: Know the Difference
This is where things start to get powerful—and where Mel says most customers’ eyes glaze over. But it’s worth understanding, because the right package setup can save your sales team serious time.
A regular package is essentially a folder. It groups related items together so your team can drop them onto a gear order in one click instead of adding each piece individually. Think of it as your standard audio package or lighting rig—a predefined set of gear that your team quotes over and over again. The individual items inside still track separately in inventory.
A price package works differently. Instead of pricing each component, you assign a single price to the entire package. This is ideal when you’re selling a bundled solution to a customer—like a “TV Package” where the customer doesn’t need to see every mount, cable, and adapter on the quote. You control what’s visible on the customer-facing quote and what stays hidden, giving your sales team flexibility to keep proposals clean while your warehouse still gets the full item breakdown.
The key distinction: regular packages are for internal efficiency. Price packages are for customer-facing simplicity.
Suggested Items Make Package Building Flexible
Not every show is the same, and LASSO accounts for that. When you build a package, you can set items as suggested rather than required. This means when your team adds the package to a gear order, LASSO prompts them with options—say, different TV sizes or fixture types—so they can customize on the fly without rebuilding from scratch.
This is especially useful for sales and PM hybrid roles. You’re not locked into a rigid configuration. You get the speed of a pre-built package with the flexibility to adjust for the specific gig.
Containers Add a Physical Layer
Packages handle the quoting and ordering side. Containers handle the physical reality of how gear moves.
Locked containers (formerly called kits) have a fixed capacity. LASSO automatically calculates how many containers you need based on the quantity on your order. Unlocked containers and free pack containers give your warehouse team more flexibility to assign and scan items as they pack.
The distinction matters for availability, too. Packages won’t show package-level availability—they show component availability, since a package is just a grouping. If you need to see availability at the container level (this case with these items inside it), you’ll want to look at locked or unlocked containers instead.
Plan Before You Build
Mel’s biggest recommendation: don’t just start creating packages in LASSO without a plan. Map it out first. Start in a spreadsheet or a visual tool like Draw.io and think through what your team is always selling. What does your warehouse always pull, show after show?
Consider building tiers—a level one show package for your biggest productions, a level three for your smaller gigs. Talk to your warehouse team about what they’re constantly assembling. That input is gold when you’re deciding what to package and how.
The payoff is real. When packages are set up thoughtfully, your sales team stops engineering every order from scratch, your quotes go out faster, and your warehouse gets cleaner pull sheets with fewer surprises.
Want the Full Walkthrough?
This blog covers the highlights, but the full strategy session goes deeper—with live demos, real-world Q&A, and practical tips from LASSO customers working through these workflows in real time. It’s all available inside The Loop, LASSO’s customer community.
👉 Join The Loop to watch the full session and connect with other LASSO customers who are optimizing their Inventory workflows every day. Not a LASSO customer yet? Schedule a 1:1 call with our team to walk through what’s possible.
Mel Baglio is an Industry Engineer at LASSO with 22 years of experience in the live events industry, including 10 years running warehouse operations.
