How do you inventory your equipment?

[penfold]

I use the librarians spare barcode scanner, print a barcode onto a mini address label and put it on the back / bottom of the machine where fingers cant get to peel them off

 

What are the kids like where you work? I realise that it's annoying when they peel the stickers off, but putting the code on the bottom of a desktop seems a little extreme. Isn't that going to take you longer to scan everything in if you have to move equipment upside down to get to the code?

 

I've used spiceworks to get all the networked stuff and then just added the extra's needed manually. It's good, but still isn't clever enough to find the laptops the teachers have locked in their cupboard without telling anyone:rolleyes:

[LCPSWolf]

What are the kids like where you work? I realise that it's annoying when they peel the stickers off, but putting the code on the bottom of a desktop seems a little extreme.

 

We solve that issue by putting the barcodes on the sides of the PC's. Out of general sight, but still scanable with relative ease. I agree though, putting them on the bottom would be tough, especially for locations where you have monitors on top.

 

Alternatively, if you're worried about sticker removal, you could write the barcode on the PC in an obscure location (say the bottom) w/ perm. marker and put the sticker in plain sight. If the barcode is removed, reference the written on # and reprint. Annoying, sure, but you're covered either way.

[plexer]

Ours will peel a sticker off the top or side of anything if it's easily visible it will get removed.

 

I'm going to have to put ours on the back or bottom or just several on each device.

 

I suppose one in an easy to scan location and one of the bottom to be double sure.

 

Ben

[penfold]

@LCPSWolf : Thats what we do. I was just thinking of how to get at the bottom of our desktops and that would involve moving the monitors off(which would need to be unplugged due to cable ties) Which as a one off is not so bad, but I wouldn't want to do that for every machine at an inventory update.

[torledo]

Assuming I've understood you right, we use a six digit number (starting at 100000) as follows:

 

[bARCODE]

1XXXXX

School Name

 

The Avery software handles everything else (i.e. the auto-increment and barcode creation). Sorry I can't go into more detail but I'm not the person here who actually uses it.

 

Cheers,

Chris

 

sorry for the confusion, i meant the actual barcode type ie code 38 or whatever.

 

I don't suppose it matters a great deal, good to know the avery software does auto-increments, we've usually used manufacturer serial number on labels as the unique identifier but i think it would be better to use an incremental unique id.

[Duke]

sorry for the confusion, i meant the actual barcode type ie code 38 or whatever.

 

Ah, sorry! Yes, we use Code 39 which is the default on Avery. We print off batches with auto-incremented numbers (obviously carrying on from whatever number we've got to), stick them on the hardware, then just scan them into our software and fill out all the details. It's probably better to fill out too much than too little, you never know when you might need to group items by some obscure category.

 

We looked at a few solutions, and while this one probably isn't perfect it does the job. One of the main things for us was the ability to know exactly what hardware was in a room and what the serial numbers were on the items. Should we ever have a break-in and anything get stolen, we can now work out exactly what was taken by getting a list of hardware in that room from the database, remove all the barcodes of things that are left, and we have a list of exactly what was taken. If we can provide a definitive hardware list with serial numbers to the police we stand a much better chance of getting our stuff back.

 

Cheers,

Chris

[TheScarfedOne]

Our helpdesk software (ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus) auto inventories anything network aware. Monitors and Projectors - barcode scanner and entered in the same place.