Stock management

The Stock Management workspace enables you to manage all aspects of the tracking process for in-stock assets. The Storage Manager user role has access to this workspace, as do the Asset Administrator and Asset Manager roles.

Defining storage spaces

The first step in managing your in-stock assets is to have a user with the Asset Administrator or Asset Manager role set up your organization's locations and storage spaces in the Locations workspace. For details, see Locations and storage spaces. Once they're defined, these locations and storage spaces will be available in the Stock Management workspace for organizing and tracking inventory.

Stock Managers can also add locations and storage spaces directly from the Stock Management workspace, but they don't have the ability to manage those locales from the Locations workspace.

Checking in stock

The second step to enabling stock management is checking assets into your storage spaces—do this from the Hardware Assets workspace. If an asset is being returned from loan, or if a user leaves the organization, you'll want to check in that asset to keep track of it. You can move assets between your defined storage spaces, assign assets to a user or a location, or transfer stock between storage spaces from this workspace.

Managing in-stock assets

The Stock Management workspace enables you to manage where your assets are stored. The list view shows all of the defined storage spaces grouped by location. Double-click an entry in the list to see details about the storage space, such as the types of assets stored there and where its fulfillment locations are. Note that you must first transfer an asset into a storage space via the Hardware Assets workspace before it displays here.

The Stock Management workspace has the following set of tabs for each defined storage space:

•Storage Space Summary – Displays Product Catalog items and the quantity of each stored at this storage space and location. Items can be hardware or consumables, not software. Quantities are updated during asset fulfillment:

•For customer asset requests – The quantity automatically decreases when an item is assigned to the customer.

•For procurement requests – The quantity automatically increases once the items arrive at this location and are checked in.

•Note that if an approval process is in place for either type of asset request, the item quantity won't update until all managers have granted approval.

•Storage Space Transactions – For consumables only: Indicates the quantity of a particular consumable stored at a storage space. The same consumable may also be in storage elsewhere—to see all possible storage spaces and quantities, open the consumable record in the Hardware Assets workspace and view the Storage Space Transactions tab.

•Assets – These are standard assets that you track individually because of their high value, though consumables are included here as well. You can add an asset to a storage space by clicking Link. Doing so updates the asset's assigned values in the Hardware Assets workspace.

You can also transfer an asset to a different storage space by selecting the asset, clicking Transfer Stock, and following the prompts. The asset will now display under the new storage space's Assets tab. The Inventory Transactions tab for both the storage space (in the Stock Management workspace) and the asset (in the Hardware Assets workspace) will include a record of this transfer.

•Consumables – These are assets that you can link to a storage space, but that generally don't have a value (such as cables, mice, and so on).

•Inventory Transactions – Keeps an automatic record of all movements of inventory into and out of a storage space.

•Fulfillment Locations – Link to a location that has been designated as an asset-request fulfillment center for this storage space. Available locations are defined in the Locations workspace.

•Audit History – Automatically tracks any changes made to key attributes of a record.