Knowing what you own and who has it

Stock items, assets and issue records against the staff and students who hold them, with the supplier and purchase history behind each one.

Book a demo

What this usually looks like today

Somebody asks how many working laptops the school has. The answer is a guess, because the purchase records are with accounts, the equipment is in three rooms, and whoever borrowed one last term may still have it.

At audit time an asset register is assembled from invoices and memory, which takes a week and is wrong by the time it is finished.

When items are recorded once and issued against a person, both questions are a filter rather than an investigation.

What it handles

Grouped by the job it does rather than listed as one long set of features.

Stock items

What you hold, where it is held and how much is left, across stores and campuses.

Assets

Equipment tracked individually with condition and location, rather than as a quantity in a category.

Issue and return

Issued against a staff member or student, so "who has it" has an answer rather than a guess.

Suppliers and purchases

Purchase history per item and per supplier, which is what makes a replacement decision defensible.

Transfers

Movement between stores, departments and campuses recorded rather than assumed.

Low stock

Visible before a store runs out rather than when somebody needs something and it is gone.

Stocktake

A comparison against what the system says rather than an inventory built from nothing.

Condition and disposal

What is broken, what was written off and when, so the register reflects reality.

Reporting

Holdings by campus or department, and spend by category, posting to accounting against the right head.

The cases most systems get wrong

The laptop nobody returned. Borrowed last term by somebody who has left. Without an issue record against a person, it is simply gone and nobody can say when.

The asset register built at audit. Assembled from invoices and memory in the week before the auditor arrives, and out of date by the time it is printed.

The store that ran out. Nobody knew stock was low because low is a number somebody has to check rather than a state the system reports.

The item that exists twice. Purchased by two departments, recorded in two lists, counted twice in the total and found once in the building.

These are the cases worth testing in a demo. Bring the messiest one you have.

Who touches it, and what they see

The same records, presented differently depending on the job.

Whoever runs the store

Records stock, issues and returns items, manages suppliers and runs the stocktake.

Staff who hold items

See what is issued to them, which removes most of the argument at return time.

The accounts office

Purchase and disposal posting against the right head, without a second entry.

Leadership

What the institution owns, where, and what it is spending on replacing it.

What it shares records with

Items are issued against the same staff and student records the rest of the institution uses, so a leaver's outstanding items are visible as part of their exit rather than discovered later.

Purchases post to accounting against the head they belong to. Library stock and hostel inventory use the same underlying records rather than parallel lists.

That is why the asset register is current rather than assembled.

Questions we get asked

Can we tell who is holding a piece of equipment?
Yes. Items are issued against a staff member or student, so "who has the laptop" has an answer rather than a guess - including when the person has left.
Is the asset register current?
It reflects what has been recorded, issued and disposed of as it happens, rather than being assembled from invoices and memory the week before an auditor arrives.
Do purchases post to the accounts?
Yes, against the head they belong to, without a second entry and without the item existing in two lists.
Are we warned before stock runs out?
Yes. Low stock is a state the system reports rather than a number somebody has to remember to check.
Can we track items across campuses?
Yes, with transfers between stores and sites recorded rather than assumed, so a group total is a total.
How does this relate to the library?
The library handles books specifically, with borrowing, reservations and fines. Inventory covers everything else the institution owns.

Bring your last stocktake

What it cost to produce and how much of it you trusted. That comparison usually makes the case on its own.

Book a demo