Help convince CTO desktop peripheral are consumables and not assets to be tagged

[u/No-Barber964]

Our company has been asset tagging everything at a desk to ensure that we can control the full lifecycle of hardware from procurement to disposal.

I’m trying to shift our process for the desk level hardware to only tag monitors as an asset and make keyboards/mouse, webcam, docking stations as consumables that we wouldn’t asset tag and only classify as consumables to track inventory levels

Our cto is consented we will loose visibility into where things are going and why we have to continually purchase more hardware when the firm isn’t growing

Any advice ?

Edit.. to add more context on the dollar amount of each model as many are saying to set a $ threshold

Monitor - $350 Headset - $250 Webcam- $160 Docking station - $100 Keyboard/mouse - $60

[u/No-Barber964]

His stance is any IT hardware at the desk should be tagged, from the $50 keyboard up to the $500 monitor

[u/patmorgan235 → u/No-Barber964]

Ask him WHY he wants everything tagged. If he just wants cost information you can still get that from consumables and tracking how many are issued without tacking and tracking each individual item.

[u/No-Barber964 → u/patmorgan235]

To prevent us from over ordering hardware , he has suspicions we aren’t properly managing inventory and letting things walk out the door

[u/flunky_the_majestic → u/No-Barber964]

Consumables can be inventoried for loss without asset tags. Even bottles of soda in vending machines are inventoried. Doesn't mean you have to care which bottle of soda goes where. They're commodities. Nobody cares which bottles get stocked in which machines. Asset tags are for tracking SPECIFIC devices.

Would it matter if two people swapped desktop computers? Yes. It would screw lots of tracking and controls up.

Would it matter if two people swapped mice? No. Nobody would ever notice or care.

If you order 100 keyboards, distribute 90, and have 10 in inventory, tracking goals are met. If one goes bad, and he's worried about theft, there should be a practice of documenting in a ticket when a replacement is made. Something as simple as taking a photo of the bad one, and a photo of the new one. Maybe with a serial number in the photo.

So, after that service call, 100 keyboards are ordered, now 90 have been distributed, 1 has been marked in a ticket as destroyed. When they check inventory, they find 9 in stock. The numbers still add up. If there are 2 in stock, someone is stealing keyboards are failing to document.