Tracking cables, chargers and other consumables: quantities, a minimum level and no spreadsheet
Every office has a drawer of cables, chargers, batteries and mice, and nobody knows what is in it until the moment someone needs one and it is not there. A register built for laptops does not help: you cannot give a serial number to thirty identical USB cables, and you should not try. Consumables need a different kind of record, and it is simpler than the one for equipment.
Count by quantity, not by item
An item with a serial number is tracked one by one: who has it, where it stands, when it was issued. A consumable is tracked as a number. The record says: charger type C, storeroom, twelve pieces. Move five to the second office and the record says seven here and five there. Nothing else is needed, and nothing else is worth the effort of typing.
The same rule keeps the register readable. Thirty cables are one line in the stock list, not thirty lines in the equipment register, so the register of real equipment stays short enough to be checked in an afternoon.
Two kinds of stock
- Consumed: paper, batteries, pens, a box of gloves. Once handed out it is gone. The record only goes down, and the question to ask is how fast.
- Handed back: a spare charger, an extension cord, a projector remote. It leaves the storeroom for a while and returns. The record needs to show that it is out, not that it is gone.
Mixing the two is the usual reason a stock list is wrong. If returnable things are written off when they leave, the count drifts up in reality and down on paper, and the first stocktake finds a shelf of items the list says do not exist.
The minimum level
The most useful number in a stock list is not the quantity but the level below which you must act. Set it once for every item: three chargers, two boxes of paper, ten batteries. When the quantity falls under it, the line changes colour in the list. That is all the warning a small organisation needs. It does not have to be an alert, an e-mail or a workflow. It has to be visible to the person who opens the list on Monday morning.
Choose the level from how long it takes you to get more, not from how much you like to keep. If a delivery takes two weeks and you use four batteries a week, the level is eight, plus a few for the week nobody ordered.
Where things are, not only how many
A total of forty cables is useless if thirty are in the head office and the field team has none. Record the quantity per place: storeroom, office, the field base, the vehicle kit. When something moves from one place to another, the move is recorded, and both numbers change together. Then a shortage is visible where it happens, not at the end of the quarter.
Check the numbers occasionally
Counts drift. Someone takes two chargers without writing it down, a box turns up in the wrong room. Once or twice a year count one place and compare it with the record. The difference is a number: three chargers short. Decide what to do with it, correct the record, and note the reason. See how to run a stocktake.
What it does not do
A stock list tells you what you have and where, and warns you when it is low. It does not order anything for you and does not manage suppliers or purchase requests. If your problem is the buying, that is a different tool. If your problem is that nobody knows what is in the drawer, this is enough.
How it looks in Depot 17
In the assets module, things counted by quantity live in a separate stock list next to the equipment register. Each item type has a unit, a quantity per place, a choice between consumed and handed back, and a minimum level that turns the line red when the stock falls under it. A stock item type counts as one item however many pieces you hold: thirty cables are one item, and that matters for the price of the module. See what the assets module does and the pricing.
This article is a practical summary, not legal or tax advice. Accounting treatment of low-value items depends on your organisation's accounting policy: agree it with your accountant.