ICT Field Notes

One of the less glamorous but most useful parts of school IT is knowing what equipment you actually have.

That sounds obvious, but when you inherit an environment with no existing asset register, no useful historical records, and roughly 2,000 assets spread across classrooms, offices, cupboards, server rooms, and storage areas, it quickly becomes a much bigger job than it first appears.

An asset register is easy to dismiss as “just a spreadsheet”, but in practice it becomes one of the foundations of a manageable IT environment. It helps with support, budgeting, replacement planning, accountability, and simply understanding what you are responsible for.

In a school, where equipment is spread across a large site and used by staff, students, departments, shared spaces, and sometimes external support, that visibility is extremely valuable.

Starting from nothing

When I started looking at asset management, there was no existing asset register to build from.

There was no central spreadsheet, no reliable export, no useful historical record, and no consistent asset tagging. Devices existed, but the information about those devices either did not exist or was not in a form that could be trusted.

That meant the first stage was not cleaning up an existing register. It was creating one from scratch.

The environment included around 2,000 assets overall. I started with the core classroom and endpoint equipment first: desktops, monitors, and projectors. From there, the register expanded over time.

Mobile devices were handled separately in their own asset register, which made sense because they had different ownership, movement, and tracking requirements compared with fixed classroom equipment.

Why an asset register matters

An asset register is not just about counting devices.

A good asset register helps answer practical questions:

• What equipment do we actually have?
• Where is it?
• Who is using it?
• What rooms have the oldest equipment?
• What needs replacing first?
• What equipment has moved?
• What has been retired?
• What needs recovering when staff leave?
• What should be included in future budget planning?

Without an asset register, a lot of IT planning becomes guesswork.

You might know roughly how many desktops are on site, or which rooms feel like they need replacing, but that is not the same as having reliable information. When it comes to budgeting, replacement cycles, and explaining priorities to leadership, “I think these rooms are old” is much weaker than having a register that shows the age, location, type, and replacement need of the equipment.

You cannot properly support, secure, replace, or budget for equipment you cannot accurately identify.

Why I started with Excel

The first version of the asset register was built in Excel.

That might not sound exciting, but it was the right tool for the stage the environment was at. I did not need a complex asset management platform on day one. I needed something simple, flexible, easy to update, and good enough to start bringing order to the environment.

Excel made it easy to quickly create columns, filter by room or device type, sort by priority, and gradually build up the data as I physically checked rooms and found equipment.

In a more mature setup, a dedicated asset management system could make sense. But when there is no register at all, the priority is not choosing the perfect tool. The priority is getting accurate information recorded somewhere.

A simple spreadsheet that gets used is better than a perfect system that never gets properly populated.

What I tracked first

I started with the equipment that was most visible and most important to day-to-day teaching and support:

• Desktops
• Monitors
• Projectors

These were the assets most likely to affect classrooms directly, and they were also the easiest place to begin because they had clear physical locations.

The register then expanded from there.

For endpoint and classroom equipment, the useful fields were things like:

• Asset number
• Device type
• Manufacturer
• Model
• Serial number
• Room or location
• Notes
• Status

At the time, I was not tracking everything I would ideally want to track in the future. For example, warranty expiry, condition, and replacement priority were not part of the initial setup. Looking back, those would be useful additions.

But that is part of the reality of building something from scratch. The first version does not need to be perfect. It needs to be useful enough to start improving the way the environment is managed.

The problem with no asset tags

One of the difficulties was that devices did not already have asset tags.

That makes asset tracking harder because there is no consistent physical identifier linking the device in front of you to the record in the spreadsheet.

Device names, serial numbers, and locations help, but they are not always enough on their own. Devices move. Names change. Labels fall off. Rooms get reconfigured. Machines get swapped during troubleshooting.

A proper asset tag gives the equipment a clear identity. Without that, the register depends much more heavily on careful manual checking and consistent updating.

If I were improving the process further, asset tagging would be one of the next big steps. It would make audits easier, reduce confusion, and make it much clearer when a device has been moved, replaced, or removed.

Why automated tools are not enough

It is tempting to think that tools like Active Directory, Intune, SCCM, or other management systems can act as the asset register.

They can help, but they are not enough on their own.

A management tool might tell you that a device exists, when it last checked in, what operating system it is running, or what its hostname is. What it may not reliably tell you is where that device physically is, whether it is attached to a particular classroom, whether it has been moved, whether it is sat unused in storage, or whether it has actually been replaced by something else.

That is especially true in a school environment, where equipment is spread across many rooms and is often moved around in response to urgent issues.

A proper asset register needs both system data and real-world verification.

The biggest challenge: keeping it updated

Building the first version of the register was only part of the job.

The harder part was keeping it updated.

The biggest issue I found was IT staff not updating the asset register when changes were made. That is probably the main reason asset registers fail in general. It is not usually because the spreadsheet has the wrong columns. It is because updating it is treated as optional.

If a monitor gets moved, the register needs updating. If a desktop is swapped, the register needs updating. If a projector is replaced, the register needs updating. If a device is retired, the register needs updating.

Otherwise, the register slowly becomes a record of what used to exist rather than what exists now.

The biggest lesson for me is that updating the asset register has to become part of the process, not an extra task someone might remember to do later.

In practice, that means almost forcing the update at the point of change. If someone swaps equipment, the job is not finished until the asset register has been updated.

How it helped with budgeting

One of the clearest benefits was budgeting and replacement planning.

Once equipment was recorded properly, it became much easier to see what existed and where the weak points were. Instead of relying on memory or rough guesses, the asset register gave a clearer picture of the estate.

That helps when planning replacements because you can start to identify patterns:

• which rooms have older equipment
• what types of devices are most common
• where replacements are likely to be needed first
• what quantities need budgeting for
• which areas are becoming a support burden

This is where the asset register stops being “just admin” and becomes a planning tool.

In a school, budgets are always limited. Being able to justify replacement priorities with actual records is far better than trying to explain it from memory.

What I would add in the future

The first version of the register was useful, but there are things I would add or improve.

The main ones are:

• Warranty expiry
• Device condition
• Replacement priority
• Clearer lifecycle status
• Disposal records
• Stronger asset tagging
• Better links to new starter and leaver processes

Warranty tracking would make it easier to identify which devices are still covered and which ones are becoming a support risk.

Condition and replacement priority would help with planning. Not every old device needs replacing immediately, and not every newer device is in good condition. Having a simple priority rating would make the register more useful when planning budgets.

Linking the register to new starter and leaver processes would also be valuable. When staff join, move role, or leave, equipment ownership should be checked and updated. Otherwise, devices can easily become unclear or go missing.

Lessons learned

The biggest lesson is that an asset register only works if it becomes part of normal IT operations.

It cannot be a one-off project that gets updated once and then forgotten. It has to be maintained whenever equipment is moved, replaced, repaired, issued, recovered, or disposed of.

For another school IT technician starting from scratch, my advice would be:

• Start simple.
• Use Excel if that is the easiest way to begin.
• Focus on the most important assets first.
• Physically verify rooms rather than trusting old assumptions.
• Add asset tags as early as possible.
• Keep the number of fields manageable.
• Make updating the register part of every equipment change.
• Do not wait for the perfect system before starting.
• Use the register to support budgeting and replacement planning.

The most important thing is to build something that gets used.

A basic, accurate, maintained asset register is far more useful than an overcomplicated system that nobody updates.

Final thoughts

Building an IT asset register from scratch is not exciting work, but it is one of those jobs that makes everything else easier.

It improves support, makes budgeting more realistic, helps with replacement planning, and gives the IT team a clearer picture of what they are actually managing.

In a school environment, with equipment spread across classrooms, offices, departments, and storage areas, that visibility matters.

The hard part is not creating the spreadsheet. The hard part is making sure it stays accurate.

For me, the biggest takeaway was that the asset register has to be treated as part of the job, not as optional admin. If equipment changes, the register changes. Otherwise, it slowly stops being useful.