When does your school district conduct inventory audits?


Userlevel 1

Before summer begins. When the school year begins. Before Winter Break.

There's no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. We'd love to hear the reasons why your team chooses to conduct inventory audits during a specific time of the year.

Sound off in the comments!


13 replies

Userlevel 4
Badge +3

Summer.. it’s the only time we can even get close to enough time and lack of interruptions.

 

We go room to room, and do a top down check for changes, cable management, soft test of all equipment. Dust air filter on projector, check bulb life then on to the next.

 

Userlevel 1

@ADeLacy 640001e ghsd I imagine many districts choose summer for this same reason. Have you ever encountered issues working around facilities maintenance schedules in the summertime? We've heard from someone who had a cart full of computers get stuck in a building that was locked for floor waxing.

Userlevel 2
Badge +1

We just started using the audit manager, and started running them during the year. It’s not as convenient as during the summer, but we have too much work to complete over the summer (projector replacements, new elementary opening, network upgrades) to also work on audits. We usually just give 2  to 3 months to verify everything. So far, we have worked on projector and STEM equipment audits, which have been able to be done before or after school in that time. We are a little slower on desk phone audits due to the sheer number of phones in our buildings.

Userlevel 4
Badge +3

@JSuarez_iiQ Sadly yes this happens a bit, Thankfully we work closely with our Facilities department as we share use of IIQ. Though there is the occasions where the schedule was not followed or someone went rogue and went to the next building in advance.  

Like most things we work around it, they have a job to do as well, one of our key approaches is not waiting to the end of summer to tackle it but try to get it kicked off within the first week. 

My only other suggestion is making sure the communication is open not only with the facilities director / coordinator but sit and talk with the Leads or crew doing the work. We all hope that communication flows in both directions but after all these years I have learned that to be false.  

We have always tried to do our audits between Nov-Feb to prepare for replacement cycle that needs to go to the board in March/April.  Tickets also slow down a bit during that window so we can fit the time in to get it done. 

We are extremely new to IIQ, so trying to not panic about using it to audit in ‘24-’25 school year. 

Userlevel 6
Badge +10

We do a quick physical check over Thanksgiving and Christmas Break combined, then a full check in the summer when there is minimal staff on site. I have the techs at the sites get me their cart changes for the year and then I can import them and update the mappings before the school year starts so they are all in the right OUs.

Userlevel 2
Badge +1

Summer. Just like many have said, this is the only time we can have all the Chromebooks and chargers in one place. It this time we do a full inspection of Chromebooks and inventory them. We then go room to room inspecting and inventorying all devices the teachers us throughout the summer.

Userlevel 1

@lpreedom Always amazes me to hear how much you are responsible for beyond student devices! Respect.

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1 week over spring break for all classrooms and offices. Then work-issued device audits when everyone returns from spring break. 

One thing that would be helpful i think is if people mentioned the size of their districts with what they do, since some things may only work with a smaller district. We have 75 schools and our techs do not work summers, we have to try and do inventory during the school year which was never very successful. We are hopeful with IIQ it will become much easier

We have our Project Life interns perform them on a rolling basis throughout the year and across our campuses.

Userlevel 2
Badge +1

One thing that would be helpful i think is if people mentioned the size of their districts with what they do, since some things may only work with a smaller district. We have 75 schools and our techs do not work summers, we have to try and do inventory during the school year which was never very successful. We are hopeful with IIQ it will become much easier

So, our district is only three buildings with a little more than 1,800 students. Two buildings are for our elementary schools, and our bigger building is high school and middle school. Tech wise we have 3 computer techs and one network administrator. All of our techs are twelve month employees and summer tends to be our super bowl. We tend to change our system around year to year because it never seems to go quite right for us. Since adding IIQ, it has made our lives far better as how fast we can inventory. Any student breaks that happen are when we get our more vital stuff done. Every summer, after getting the Chromebooks back from the students, we inspect and inventory all of them. After that we move to inventorying the buildings. Each tech with a Chromebook and a scanner and bulk update seems to work well for us. 

We have our Project Life interns perform them on a rolling basis throughout the year and across our campuses.

Our District is 6 campuses, 12 buildings, 2500 students, 9000 tech assets

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