EOL Asset DB – Toner inventory

The IT Assets Database was replaced by the IT Admins CMDB and is EOL / End of Life, no further development will be done on this project.

How many times have you got an urgent help desk call to exchange an empty toner on a printer just to find out the toner inventory was empty. Now, you should have a) some monitoring on the printer it self using a monitoring software and checking for the supply levels – alerting you pro-actively – especially for central printers – but you also need to make sure you constantly have enough toners in your inventory.

The IT asset management tries to help you there, without overdoing it. It shows you how many printers of a specific model you have deployed and therefor you can decide on how big your supply-levels for those printers should be. You further can do a weekly quick check and provide current supply levels – the application then tells you how many you should order depending on what is defined for the supply and what you have in stock.

It is on purpose that you do not need to book a supply like a toner out when you use it. Making the live complicated when a member of your team runs to the inventory grabbing a toner for an executive printer is not what you should do – in any case – you sure could adjust the code and implement it.

In order to do the inventory, you actually can print out a simple report via Print Inventory Form where you can fill in the numbers while in the toner inventory storage room. You can then enter the numbers in to the database.

As for what you need – you simply go to the to Order # column and type in >0 (more then 0) in the filter text box and if you want export this to Microsoft Excel to generate an an order while processing the data further.

It is also noteworthy that the toner inventory can be more then just a toner-inventory. You can define any supplies in the printer models – like empty toner containers and possibly maintenance kits for your printers etc. – everything you regularly need.

The IT assets database has an additional IT supplies module – it is independent of the printers and was implemented later. It is designed to have e.g. SSDs, light bulbs and other supplies on hand and in the inventory.

Data field and reference overview

  • Supply code (from printer models / supplies)
  • Shelf code (from printer models / supplies)
  • Printer Model
  • Vendor (from printer models / supplies) – where you normally order the toner / supply from
  • amount of printers active of the defined model
  • should be (from printer models / supplies)
    • how many of this supply you should have on hand – you should set this relative to the amount you get through quickly and how many of the printer model you have actively supplied
  • last entry by – this is the last person entering the current amount of toners in the inventory
  • last entry date – when the last count was entered
  • in stock – the last entered amount
  • to order – the difference between should be and in stock – but only if in stock is less then the should be amount