A stock-take checklist for IT kit

A stock take (a physical audit) is the moment the register meets the building. Its purpose is to confirm that what the register says exists, and is where it says, is actually there, and to find what is there that the register does not know about. This checklist is the plain version of that job. The longer reasoning, and how the workflow looks inside Tagaris, is in how to run a physical audit.

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Before

1. Decide the scope: the whole estate, one site, or one building. A first stock take is easier as one site.
2. Fix a date and tell the people whose rooms you will enter. Ask for kit that lives in drawers, bags and cupboards to be on the desk.
3. Freeze changes to the register for the day, or agree that only the audit team writes to it.
4. Export the register to CSV as a baseline so you can compare before and after. If you are still on a spreadsheet, the free template gives you the columns.
5. Print the expected list per room, or make sure the room's page is reachable on a phone. In Tagaris, every location page lists what should be in it.
6. Label anything you know is unlabelled before you start, so the walk is scanning rather than typing. Print labels for rooms as well as devices; the QR labels and scanning page covers the sheets.
7. Charge the phone or tablet you will scan with, and confirm it can reach the register from the rooms you will be in.
8. Agree what "found" means: seen with your own eyes and its serial or tag checked, not reported by someone as present.

During

1. Work one room at a time, in a fixed order, and finish a room before you leave it.
2. Start from the room's expected list. Scan or tick each item you find, checking the tag or serial rather than the make and model.
3. For each item found, note anything that has changed: a different user, a different desk, a different status (in repair, in storage, retired).
4. For anything on the list you cannot find, record it as missing for now. Do not remove it from the register during the walk.
5. For anything in the room that is not on the list, record it as unexpected: tag or serial, make and model, and where it was. Photograph it if the serial is awkward to read.
6. Unlabelled kit gets a tag now, not later. Write it on a temporary label if the printed sheet has run out.
7. Check the cupboards, drawers, trolleys and the top of the rack. That is where the unexpected items are.
8. Mark each asset audited as you confirm it. In Tagaris that sets the last audited date on the asset; on paper, initial and date the row.
9. Note the room as complete before moving on, with who did it and when.

After

1. Apply the changes: move assets to the room they were found in, update assignees and statuses, and add the unexpected items as new assets. In Tagaris, bulk move handles a room's strays in one action.
2. Chase the missing items for a set period. Ask the last known holder, check the repair pile, check the leaver process. Only then retire or write off what is still missing, with the date and reason recorded.
3. Compare against the baseline export and write a one-page summary: counted, found, moved, missing, added, and the value of anything written off.
4. Fix the process failures the count exposed: the room with no labels, the leaver whose laptop nobody collected, the devices enrolled in Intune or Jamf that never reached the register.
5. Filter the register for anything not audited in the last cycle. That list is the scope of the next count.
6. Put the next stock take in the calendar. Once a year for the whole estate, or a rolling few rooms each month, both work; not scheduling it is what fails.
7. File the summary and the change log where an auditor or insurer can find them.

Using it with Tagaris

Tagaris has the same steps built in. Every location has a page listing what should be in it, printable QR labels go on rooms and devices, the stock-take workflow records an audit on each asset as you confirm it, and the asset list filters on the last-audited date. On an iPhone or iPad, audit mode in the app walks a room label by label. All of it is on the free tier. The checklist works just as well on paper; the difference is how much of steps two and three happen on their own.