How are you managing laptop procurement & retrieval for a growing remote team?

Posted by Plenty-Exchange-5355@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 23 comments

We’re a mid-sized, mostly remote company and growing quickly. One of our biggest IT headaches is managing laptops and accessories: shipping them to new hires, tracking who has what, and retrieving everything during offboarding. It’s getting harder to scale this process without burning time and energy. We’re still juggling spreadsheets, manual shipping, and scattered inventory. So curious, how are you all handling IT asset procurement and recovery in a more streamlined way? Any tools, services, or processes that have worked well for you? Thanks in advance!

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23 Comments

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piefordays@reddit

allwhere. We were doing all our retrieving in-house with a team of ONE (lol ME) for a company that was 3xing in size over the course of 12 months. Which is exciting on one hand. But on the other hand, things started to get out of control fast. My direct manager got me approved for a budget and I found allwhere through typical Google searching. Been using them for the last 6 months and will never look back to the life I had before them lmao

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throwawayBakingGoods@reddit

We use allwhere and so far have shipped/retrieved around 160 assets to employees. Can't recall a single time they ever even remotely messed up. Smooth process, quick turnaround...if it's not broke, don't fix it lol.

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laptoplifeline@reddit

We had the same problem from shipping laptops, tracking who had what, and chasing returns was a mess, especially after we started hiring across countries. It felt like we were spending too much time just managing devices. Now we use a IT service provider call Esevel. They handle procurement, tracking, and offboarding in one place. Everything’s centralized, so we can easily see where each device is and manage returns remotely. When we run into any laptop or device issue, we just submit a ticket and they work it out for us.

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yuvi_agg@reddit

We had a same headache with shipping and tracking. Ended up switching to ZenAdmin and trust me it’s way smoother now. They handle procurement, shipping, and even retrieval when someone leaves, so we’re not stuck doing it all manually anymore. Definitely worth looking into if you’re growing fast.

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Famous_Mushroom7585@reddit

Are we working for the same company? Google sheets for inventory, fedex labels in another tab, total chaos once we hit 250 heads. Tried using deel and even a shipbob hack, but stuff still went missing. Ended up rolling with Workwizem hr punches in the start date, it grabs the right laptop from a local warehouse, tracks who’s got it, and auto books a courier when they leave (no more “hey did we ever get the macbook back?” lol slacks). Took a weekend to set up and now i dont think about shipping at all biggest time-saver we’ve pulled off since going remote.

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Ill-Discussion-8498@reddit

Don't want to get blasted for being an "ad" so I won't mention business names, but my company offers this service. Feel free to reach out to me and we can arrange a chat

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Sure_Marsupial_4309@reddit

We used to struggle with this too- onboarding and offboarding remote employees was a constant logistical mess. We started using Allwhere a few months back. It’s not perfect, but it’s taken a lot of the grunt work off our plate. They handle most of the logistics- procurement, shipping, returns, even storage between hires. If you’re past the 100 employee mark and still remote-heavy, it’s worth looking into. Not a silver bullet, but it made our lives noticeably easier.

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swishtalk@reddit

is this integrated with Intune? or is just a slightly better fedex lol

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Feisty-Leg3196@reddit

We use Revivn and it's been great for asset retrieval. Bit of a pain when integrating it with our ITSM tool, but great service

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Historical_Orchid129@reddit

Using CDW and it has been a nightmare

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Rawme9@reddit

HR issue - we just provide info on where it is, last check-in, etc. and they handle the legal threats

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malikto44@reddit

VAR sends laptops pre-provisioned, I send them to the users, users open them up, AutoPilot and InTune, or the Mac MDM sing their song, and the deed is done. I always keep 5-10% more laptops than people, just so I don't have to sit there and troubleshoot some problem... I just get the user a spare, send the faulty laptop for depot service... it will be out of circulation for 6-8 weeks, but at least it will come back fixed (hopefully.)

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PMmeyourITspend@reddit

If you're doing it in house, I'd recommend not trying to get back monitors but only docking stations, cameras and laptops. Monitors cost a lot to ship, often don't survive, take up a lot of space when returned and are only $100 new. You can have someone else do it- I can sell stuff like this and once you crack a few hundred remote users, some customers (not all, tons still do it in house) will outsource it to us and basically they have us create a new hire kit with an intune enrolled laptop that goes out when a new hire is added. Some also use us as a outsourced IT closet so that when they are offboarding a user, we send that user a box with instructions and a return label, then once them items are returned, verify they work, wipe them if needed, and add them to a users closet for reshipping when needed. Overall the fees for these things are pretty reasonable- like $30-50 all in for the intune enrollment, storage and shipping of a new hire kit. $50 to get a return packaging box with a return label on it. Then like 20$ to have someone recertify it.

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JwCS8pjrh3QBWfL@reddit

This is more of an HR issue than an IT one, IMO. They need to refine their process to get you hires in a reasonable amount of time (we got a week) so you have time to assemble the kit and ship it out. As for terminations, look into getting an account with Fedex or UPS. We had a sheet that HR gave to terminations to take to any Fedex office in North America. It has a QR code on it, and all the (ex-)user has to do is hand them the QR code sheet and drop off all their shit. Fedex packages it up and ships it back to us, it's almost zero effort for the user. If the user did not ship their equipment back in a timely fashion (3 weeks, I think?) then HR had some kind of repercussion (I think withholding the last paycheck or something). But in the end, the actual logistics and contacting the ex-employee was not IT's problem, we just waited for the box of goodies to show up.

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JazzlikeSurround6612@reddit

Setting up is not so bad it’s almost the same as if someone is in the office just after done there is a shipping time period. I’ve made very clear gone are the days of zero day notice especially if it has to be shipped, so if they don’t give proper heads up then the person might be without computer for a few days. Getting them back I’ve pushed off as a HR / Management issue part of the termination procedure is to get the equipment back. I never contact the terminated employee just ask HR / the manager a few times about the equipment and if it doesn’t come back report it stolen to the asset team and I’m done with it. As far as tracking who has what that’s not really any different for remote than it is for in office employees.

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SetylCookieMonster@reddit

There was a similar thread recently - might find something useful there: [https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1l9nhyy/how\_do\_you\_all\_handle\_laptop\_deployments\_and/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1l9nhyy/how_do_you_all_handle_laptop_deployments_and/) but as mentioned already by @[Dinilddp](https://www.reddit.com/user/Dinilddp/) watch out for the ads (even I'm a vendor, but at least trying to be upfront about it).

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Dinilddp@reddit

I'm just following. Can I trust these comments lol? Feels more like an ad

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disposeable1200@reddit

Definitely not

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SirLoremIpsum@reddit

Two posts definitely ads...

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Sure_Marsupial_4309@reddit

Totally feel your pain- this used to be a nightmare for us too. We recently switched to using Allwhere, and it's been a huge relief. They handle procurement, shipping, tracking, retrieval, and even storage of employee devices. When someone joins, their laptop gets shipped automatically. When they leave, Allwhere handles return logistics as well! If you’re over 100 employees and growing, I’d definitely recommend checking it out- it saved us a ton of time and headaches.

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Sushi-And-The-Beast@reddit

What do you mean? You still have to autopilot it or image it.

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Sure_Marsupial_4309@reddit

So they integrate with our device management system which used to already automate the imaging part for us.

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BeautifulOrdinary978@reddit

We’ve been in a similar spot: growing remote team, and laptop logistics were starting to eat up way too much time. Shipping new devices, tracking who had what, and especially getting stuff back during offboarding was turning into a full-time job. We started using Workwize recently, and it’s been working well so far. They help with sourcing and shipping laptops locally, and also handle returns and storage when someone leaves. It’s helped us get away from spreadsheets and manual follow-ups, which has been a big relief. The platform’s pretty straightforward, and support has been responsive whenever we needed help — especially for more unusual requests or locations. Definitely a step up from juggling everything manually.