IT Inventory Tips for Nonprofits with Johan Hammerstrom

Community IT Innovators Nonprofit Technology Topics

What do you need to do now to track your inventory? Why do you need to track inventory - and why isn't there a killer app for that yet?

A significant number of clients come to Community IT without any inventory tracking at all. Besides being a financial risk this is a clear security risk - especially if you have no system in place to off-board staff who leave your nonprofit but keep their laptop and access to private files and business subscriptions.

Why is it so hard to track inventory if you are a smaller organization (under 100 staff)? Listen to CEO Johan Hammerstrom share the three categories of inventory you need to track, and where that information probably lives at your nonprofit. With a little prioritization now, you can ensure your organization is protected from bad actors and can account for all your laptops. Johan shares these IT inventory tips to help our community avoid headaches and security risks.
Some Key IT Inventory Tips:

There is no perfect software or app to track inventory for smaller organizations. You will have to track it yourself, it cannot easily be delegated and philosophically probably shouldn’t be outsourced. A spreadsheet can work for smaller organizations.

Three categories of inventory you need to track:

• Equipment as an asset that the organization has purchased. Need to track it as part of financial accounting. Usually tracked by finance team.
• Who has that equipment been assigned to? Which laptop went to which staff member? This can also be tracked by the finance or HR team, or the IT team.
• Who is logged in to that computer? Who is the end user and which apps and licenses are they using (that the organization is paying for). Where is it located, how is it logged into the internet, who is the last person to log in to it? Your IT team will be able to track this.

You should cross reference these three categories and reconcile them periodically.

You need a standard process for off-boarding staff and recovering equipment from them/deactivating their subscriptions and access.

Managing subscriptions is a related issue, and is equally important for your nonprofit to track, both for financial reasons (paying for subscriptions that are not being used, or paying for individual subscriptions when an enterprise subscription would be easier/cheaper/have more features) and for cybersecurity reasons.

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Thanks for listening.