The Space Your Files Take
A workspace fills up slowly and then all at once — usually with the scanned delivery note nobody needed in colour. What counts towards storage, where to see what is using it, and what happens on the day it is full.
Nobody budgets for file storage, and for the first year nobody needs to. Then a branch starts photographing every delivery note on a phone that saves twelve-megapixel images, a supplier sends scanned contracts at full resolution, and the workspace that took a year to use its first gigabyte uses the next one in a month. Storage is the quietest limit an operations system has, which is exactly why it deserves five minutes before it matters.
What counts
Storage is every file your workspace keeps, across every module, counted once. That is wider than most people assume, because it includes the files the platform makes for you as well as the ones you upload.
- Attachments on requisitions, quotations, purchase orders, bills, invoices, expenses and tickets.
- Documents in the document vault, employee files and supplier applications.
- Photos of items and assets, and the signatures captured when goods change hands.
- Generated PDFs — invoices, receipts, check-in and check-out notes, scheduled reports — because each one is a stored file someone may need to open again.
What does not count is the data itself. Ten thousand stock movements, five years of ledger entries and every customer you have ever invoiced take up records, not storage. A workspace runs out of storage because of files, never because it has been busy.
Where to see what is using it
Settings › Storage shows four things: how much is used, what the plan allows, the percentage, and — the useful part — which areas are taking the space, largest first. It is the page to open before buying anything, because it usually answers the question a different way.
The usual culprit
When one area dominates, it is nearly always photographs taken at full resolution on a phone. A delivery note does not need to be a twelve-megapixel image to be legible, and the same habit across three branches is most of a gigabyte a quarter. Fix the habit before you buy the space.
The day it is full
Reaching the allowance is designed to be undramatic. Nothing already stored is touched, nothing is archived and nothing becomes read-only. What changes is that a new upload which would take the workspace past its allowance is paused, with a message saying how much space the file needs and how much is left.
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Uploads pause; everything else carries on
Receiving stock, raising invoices and approving payments all keep working. Only adding a new file waits.
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Generated documents are never refused
An invoice PDF or a signed delivery note the platform produces is counted, but it is never blocked — refusing it would break the action someone is in the middle of, not stop an upload.
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You choose how to make room
Delete files you no longer need, or add storage a gigabyte at a time from the Customize screen. Either takes effect on the next upload.
There is one separate limit worth knowing: each plan also sets the largest single file it accepts. A file over that size is refused on its own, however much space is free — the answer there is a smaller file, not more storage. Both figures for every plan are in the pricing comparison.
Buying storage without buying headroom
Storage is added on top of the plan you already have, one gigabyte at a time, and it can be reduced again at no charge — down to what the workspace actually stores, never below it. That shapes the right way to buy it: add a gigabyte when the storage page says you are close, not five on the day you sign up against a volume you have never produced. The add-ons page sets out the terms beside the seat add-ons.
Before you add storage
Which area is using the most space?
Look for
One area well ahead of the rest.
What it tells you
A habit to change — often photo resolution — before a gigabyte to buy.
How fast did the last gigabyte fill?
Look for
A steady month-on-month figure.
What it tells you
Buy for the next quarter at that rate, not for a guess.
Are old scanned documents still needed online?
Look for
A named owner who can say yes or no.
What it tells you
Space you may be able to free without buying any.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- File storage included on every plan, counted across the whole workspace.
- A storage page showing what is used, what the plan allows and which areas take the space.
- Uploads paused at the allowance with the space needed and left; nothing stored is touched.
- Generated documents counted and never refused.
- Storage added a gigabyte at a time on the current plan, and reduced at no charge down to what is stored.
More we can add to your workspace
- Automatic image compression on upload, so phone photos land at a sensible size.
- An alert when a workspace passes a storage threshold you choose.
- Moving older files to a cheaper archive tier while keeping them openable.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We keep files you delete out of the count, but we do not decide which of your documents can go — that judgement stays with whoever owns the records.
Any of the middle column can be added to your workspace.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsSee what your plan includes
Every plan’s storage and its largest single file, side by side, with the rest of the limits.
Compare plansFrequently asked questions
What counts towards file storage?
Every file the workspace keeps: attachments, documents, item and asset photos, captured signatures and the PDFs the platform generates, such as invoices and scheduled reports. Records themselves, like stock movements and ledger entries, do not count.
What happens when storage is full?
New uploads pause until space is freed or added. Nothing already stored is touched, every other action keeps working, and documents the platform generates are never refused.
Can I add storage without changing plan?
Yes. Storage is added one gigabyte at a time on the plan you already have, and can be reduced again at no charge down to what the workspace stores.
Is there a limit on the size of one file?
Yes, each plan sets the largest single file it accepts. A larger file is refused however much space is free, so the answer is a smaller file rather than more storage.
