One list that answers five questions at once
How many laptops do you have, where are they, whose are they and when does cover end. Four questions anyone can ask and almost nobody can answer without an afternoon of searching. This page is about the list that fixes that, and about why that list is nearly always a spreadsheet that no longer adds up.
Five questions, one answer
They come from five different directions and they all need the same list.
- The insurerAfter damage or theft they want to know what was there and what it was worth. Without registration by serial number the discussion is not about cover but about existence.
- The auditorWho had access to which device, was it disposed of and is the data demonstrably gone. That is the same list, with one column added.
- The warrantyA device that fails is either covered or not, and the difference is a date. Without a register that gets worked out case by case, and that costs more than the repair.
- The licencesWhere software hangs off a device or a user, the list is the only way to know whether you are paying too much or too little. In a vendor audit, too little is more expensive than too much.
- The budgetWhen does what have to be replaced. With a register that is an export; without one it is an estimate that disappoints every year in the fourth quarter.
From a spreadsheet to something that holds
Four steps. The fourth is where it fails for almost everyone.
Count properly once
What is there, by serial number, with owner and location. That is work and it happens once; everything after is upkeep. Expect the first count to differ from the paperwork by ten to twenty per cent.
Tie the sources together
What the management system already knows about workplaces, what procurement knows about orders and what the supplier knows about warranty. Three sources that complement each other, rather than three lists that drift apart.
Agree an owner and a rhythm
One person by name, and a moment when it is reviewed. A register without an owner ages exactly as fast as your organisation changes.
Hook into the moments it changes
A purchase, an issue to a user, a failure, a leaver and a disposal. If the register is updated at those five moments by the process itself, it keeps holding. If it depends on somebody remembering, it does not.
Three reasons the register stops adding up
All three show the same symptom: nobody trusts the list any more, so nobody updates it.
- It lives in a spreadsheetThat works at fifty devices and no longer at two hundred. The problem is not the file but that no event updates it by itself.
- There are no serial numbers in itWithout a serial number a row is a quantity and not a device. For insurance, warranty and disposal that number is the only thing that counts.
- Disposal is never reported backDevices that are gone stay on the list, and after two years thirty per cent of it does not exist. Then the list is not corrected but ignored, and that is the end of it.
What goes with this
The register is fed by the processes around it.
Questions we get about this
The ones that come up most, answered briefly.
Can this not just live in a spreadsheet?
At fifty devices it can. The problem is not the file but that no event updates it by itself: a purchase, an issue to a user, a failure, a leaver and a disposal all have to land in it without somebody having to remember.
How long does a first count take?
That depends on how much there is and how spread out it is, not on the technology. Expect the result to differ from the paperwork by ten to twenty per cent; that gap is normal and it is immediately the argument for doing it properly once.
We already have a management system, is that not the same?
That knows what is attached to the network, which is not the same as what you own. Equipment in a cupboard, a spare that is switched off and a licence without a device do not appear in it, and those three are exactly why a register exists.
Start by counting properly once
Say roughly how many devices are involved and what you use to track them now. You get back what a first count costs and which three moments keep the register current afterwards.
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