School inventory and assets: stock, issue, return and audits

The situation: the store room in June

Before a new term, the school store is busy: notebooks and uniforms are counted, lab glassware is checked, sports equipment comes back from the last term, and new purchases arrive. Meanwhile projectors, laptops and furniture have moved between rooms all year without much of a record.

The tension: the stock register says one thing, the shelf another

A stock register is accurate only if every movement is written in it. In practice, items are issued on a busy morning and noted later, a damaged item is thrown away without a note, and the "current stock" column is corrected by hand at the next count. When the yearly audit comes, the difference between the register and the shelf has no explanation.

The insight: stock is the sum of its movements

The reliable way to keep a store is to stop treating the stock figure as something you write down. Instead, record every movement: received, issued, returned, transferred, adjusted, damaged, lost. The current stock is then the sum of those movements, and any difference has a trail.

The decision: how a school store can run

Record movements, not totals

Every change to stock is a movement with a date, a quantity and a reason. Nobody edits the total.

Tag fixed assets

Projectors, computers and furniture each get a tag code. The code identifies the asset, never the person using it, so a label on a laptop does not carry a teacher's name. Assign the asset to a room or a person in the system, record its condition, and raise maintenance when needed.

Purchase in steps

A purchase moves through a request, a decision, a purchase order and the goods received note. When goods arrive, the receipt becomes a movement into stock.

Audit against the ledger

At audit time, count what is on the shelf and compare it with what the ledger expects. Each difference is recorded as an adjustment with a reason.

The evidence: what Campus One does

Inventory and assets are built in the Campus One demo:

• current stock is worked out from recorded movements, with no field where someone types the stock figure, and stock is valued at its weighted average cost;
• fixed assets can be registered, assigned, moved, given a condition, maintained and retired;
• each asset tag is a code without a person's name, printed as a QR code and a barcode on a label from the browser;
• purchases run from request and decision to purchase order and goods received note;
• vendors, storage locations and audits have their own pages.

Two limits apply: labels print from the browser, so thermal label printers are not supported, and opening an asset by pointing a phone camera at its tag outside the app is not built yet. Inventory and assets are part of the Complete plan.

Loans: what is still out?

Schools lend as much as they consume: sports kit to a house team, lab equipment to a class, a laptop to a teacher for the term. The question at the end of term is always the same: what is still out, and with whom? Record every loan as an issue against the class, student or staff member, and every return against that issue, and the answer becomes a list rather than a search. In Campus One, issues are kept as records and taken back from a returns list, so what is still out is always visible.

Questions to ask about any inventory system

1. Is the current stock calculated from movements, or typed into a field?
2. Can you see what is still out on loan, and with whom?
3. Does an asset label carry any personal data?
4. Who approves a purchase, and can the person who requested it also approve it?
5. Does receiving goods update the stock by itself?

Campus One's answers: calculated, never typed; a returns list shows what is still out; tags carry a code, never a name; in the demo school the person who raised a purchase request cannot approve it; and receiving goods posts them into stock through the ledger with the goods received note.

The outcome: an audit with explanations

When every movement is recorded, the audit stops being a search. The difference between the shelf and the ledger is small, and each part of it has a date and a reason.

The takeaway

Record movements instead of totals, tag assets without names, run purchases in steps and audit against the ledger. The Campus One inventory page shows how the product does it.