An Out of Date Ticket System Wasn’t Working For the Hockinson School District When It Came to Asset Tracking

The old way of doing things was no longer a viable option for the Hockinson School District when it came to tracking vital assets. Asset Panda introduced a new platform and they’ve never looked back.

Asset Panda Solutions:

• Check in/Check out status
• Data Import
• Role-based settings
• Customized reporting
• Asset tracking over multiple locations
• Unlimited custom fields
• Inventory Management

The Hockinson School District is located in Brush Prairie, Washington. We are a small district, made up of 3 schools and the district office, with approximately 250 employees.

Even though we are small, keeping up with assets was a big challenge for us. Equipment was moving from place to place and from employee to employee, and no one was tracking it accurately. We did utilize a type of “ticketing system” when an asset was checked in/out, but the problem there was that staff didn’t bother to update it. They took what equipment was needed and didn’t record it. No one had up-to-date, real-time information on where assets were at any given time. To add to that, the ticketing system was out of date and not flexible for our needs.

It’s a different story now that we have Asset Panda. We have a number of expensive IT assets that are constantly on the go as well as ones that are supposed to stay in one location, such as laptops, iPads, computers, audio equipment, etc. In a field where every dollar counts, it’s important that we stay on top of these items and watch our spending. Asset Panda helps us know where each of these items are and if they are in the location they should be.

That’s where the mobile capabilities of the platform come in handy. When staff is out in the field, we can check on the status of any asset no matter where we are. It’s also helpful when moving from campus to campus and checking out items to students, like iPads for example. We can scan the barcode on the iPad with our own smartphone/tablet and capture all the pertinent details in Asset Panda about who received the iPad, when it was checked in/out, what condition it is in, software installed on the item and so much more. This data is stored in the cloud an accessible 24/7. There’s no longer a need to go back to the office and make students or employees come to us.

On a personal level, I no longer have to write down or try to remember information that has to be changed in the system about any given asset. I can immediately make changes right on my own phone via the mobile app and it’s updated immediately in Asset Panda and viewable by all users. I save almost an hour of time in my day when it comes to asset tracking and all the tasks that are associated with it because of Asset Panda.

Asset Panda has proven to be valuable when it comes to assets that are out of service for maintenance or need to be repaired. We can view the full repair history of assets and see how many times it’s needed to go in or if there are certain assets that aren’t holding up or being used as we intended. We can easily pull reports from this data that allows us to make more productive decisions on what and how we are spending district dollars.

Asset Panda allows us to create alerts and notices around equipment maintenance repairs schedules using custom date fields. We can set up notifications days in advance so employees know certain pieces of IT equipment may be out of service, and lesson plans can be adjusted accordingly.

When it comes to asset tracking for schools/education, Asset Panda is definitely a good choice. From the mobile capabilities to customer service and even the added integrations like Google Workspace, it’s modernized the way we track assets and made a once challenging task much more efficient.

 – Austin Webberley, IT Support Technician I