How to do an equipment audit

You don’t have to tackle it all at once…divide and conquer.

If your equipment room is home to over 50 items, if ten or more people use the equipment, and/or you have multiple shifts passing through, regularly auditing your gear isn’t something you can pass on… unless you want to get fired. Kidding! (Not kidding!)

Periodic equipment audits pave the way for The Perfect Equipment Room Workflow: you have all the gear you need for the next project on hand, you know where everything else is, it’s all in great shape, and you know what you have to rent and when – and your creatives are free to do what they do best with zero extra stress.

Four types of audits

Operating across multiple locations? Have a large production team? Own lots of different items? Is turnover high? Your audit approach depends on how your organization is set up.

Good: location based

Your basic audit approach: take stock of everything you have in one location. This can get pretty intense, especially if you’re auditing often, working with serial numbers and spreadsheets, and/or have lots of varied equipment.

Better: category based

Instead of trying to round up everything on-site, tackle your audit by categories of items that live together on your shelves: monitors, lenses, batteries, etc. Rotate through each category continuously.

Self-service: kit based

If you organize your equipment room in groups of items (camera, lenses, monitor, battery, cable A, cable B, etc.), rotate through each kit regularly – or have kit users perform these mini audits themselves.

Proactive: checkout based

Why not perform an audit before the equipment used for a project gets checked back in? Start every project with a list of items and then go through it before bringing it back. A great way to avoid unpleasant surprises.

Asset labeling: a fast track to pain-free equipment audits

Tagging your equipment and using a USB or Bluetooth scanner or mobile app is a game-changer for smooth, simple audits, hiccup-free workflows, and epic efficiency.

But wait, there’s more! Giving each of your items its own unique identity and profile:

• ensures security and traceability (also handy for warranty)
• proves your organization’s ownership
• keeps boring manual tasks off your plate
• links them seamlessly with your asset management system

Nerd out by reading our asset tag e-book!

Pro tip

a digital asset management tool like Cheqroom centralizes all the data you have about each piece of gear by location, category, kit, custody, and project. You can perform audits at any moment by automatically excluding checked-out equipment from your audit or even pausing it to follow up on later.

If you want to read the complete AV Q&A series, click here!

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