Inventory Sheet for IT equipment

[azev]

I Know this is out of topic, but how do you guys inventory all your gear at work ??
My boss asked me to create some sort of inventory sheet for everything that we have.
If you guys have some system you're willing to share, I am all ear! or maybe some examples ??

Thanks

 

[reicherb]

Right now, I'm just using an excel spreadsheet (Access database soon) that contains:
room number
part/computer name
serial number
make
model
purchase date
warranty expiration

That what I can think of off the top of my head.

 

[gaidin123]

We use some insane overkill system called Maximo that uses a SQL database to track work orders for multiple departments including IT (mine) and also to do inventory of all equipment. You can probably get a good enough inventory system on an Access database or SQL with a web frontend depending on what kinds of resources are available at your workplace.

No matter how you end up doing it, keeping the thing up to date and accurate will become a huge pain if you have more than 1 person responsible for data entry along with an ever expanding list of equipment. We've gone through two thorough housecleanings in the past year to get to a point where the reports we run on our equipment are actually becoming accurate. It makes the boss happy to get graphs and charts of how well OS migrations are going or what our baseline systems are out in the field, machine lifecycles, etc.

Gaidin

Edit: There are a number of free, already made solutions out there for IT shops too. You may want to search around before building your own.

 

[DarkTXKnight]

Can you point out where I could find some of these free IT solutions???? Im tyring to do an inventory here and would be interested.

 

[MysticLlama]

Ours is in a small Access dB, that we typically modify with an Access form or just direct to the table.

It's small enough to not be too much of a hassle, and we only have like 40 workstations, so it's not a huge deal. We do also have 28 retail stores, and keeping those straight as far as what type of printers and scanners and such they have is a big pain.

Since we use all clones for our workstations, this is how we break them down:

Computername
Processor Speed
Amount of RAM
Amount of Disk Space
Windows Version (this will hopefully be all the same soon, we're 95% migrated to XP)
Monitor Size
Perfect Flat Yes/No
LCD Yes/No
Various internal software apps Yes/No

I think that's about it, I'll post anything else if I think of it.

I haven't posted the dB on the Intranet yet, so I'd have to go dig around on the other IT guys box to find it, and that could take a while.

 

[mcveigh]

post it notes! :beer:

 

[loup garou]

We use a custom Access application to keep track of most of our clients' equipment. However, for the smaller clients who keep track of their own stuff (be it IT or otherwise), AssetManage is a very cheap, very easy to use Asset Management tool. It's not the most professional solution, but for smaller companies and for $50, it can't be beat.

 

[piasabird]

At our location each piece of physical equipment is assigned a unique identifier. This goes on a sticker and is placed on the item. A mirc line printer may actually work better if you have a MIRC line inventory system. This is the lines they put on merchandise at the store.

Then we have one record for each item in an indexed file. Could use a database. Could have a lookup table for the item type. For instance if you purchase 200 computers of the same type it would be bad form to type that in 20 different ways like we do on our flat file. Then we also have a building and room for each item also. We use special building and rooms for things missing or sent in for repair! That way we can make a list by item, serial#, location, building, room, Description, Class, etc. We added a class so we have different classes of items. ie, Musical Instrument, Medical Equipment, Data Processing, Audio Visual, etc. We have some other things we use for inventory control like we notate the items that are in the current batch for adds, deletes, changes, returns. Then when the current batches are balanced by accounting we mark that batch as processed and remove the flag. Then the next batches are used so we know that equipment is final. We also use dates for Warranty (Parts/Labor). We keep a blanket insurance policy on the noncovered items. If the item value drops too low we remove it from insurance and place it on Machine Insurance which means when it quits we get rid of it. The Deleted items never are removed from the file they are marked "D" for delete in the ownership column. We may have some "L" for leased also.

Confused yet?

This file is for Inventory, Asset management, Insurance.

You could add another file or table for software management!

 

[SandLizard]

we use Intuit (the bought out Blue Ocean) Track-It!

I like the options and such, but consider we don't have it running completely yet (off of our SQL server, the TrackIt v6.0 is all web-based, also), I just entered in our 'spare' 80 workstations yesterday.

It has the option to perform audits on computers and take them over for work also (audits for software and hardware)--we're spread across 13 locations w/ about 250 or so main workstations.

Um, that's about it, but I think it's also expensive, though I'm not sure, I wasn't part of the decision making process and what modules we also purchased.

EDIT: we were using an access db which works semi-ok, but were getting a bit large for it. we also use Visio for our layout of our network.

 

[Smilin]

Absolute software has a great product for doing and maintaining PC inventories. Unlike some others they handle your inventory data and data scrubbing on their end - you just access a web site to get any info you need.

Track-it is good stuff too but O-MY-GOD are they expensive and probably feature overkill for what you're looking at.

We're using a home grown app here but will be switching to Absolute as soon as the budget allows.

 

[AgGolfer]

Track-it in my opinion sucks. We have had all kinds of problems with it. But, I will have to say that since we moved it from an Access to SQL database, it is a lot faster and stable. We just ordered LANDesk for our company for inventory and other uses. We will still use TrackIt for purchase orders and help tickets.