Education & labs
Departmental gear and student checkout, handled
From media centers to maker labs, give departments a system that tracks equipment, manages student checkout, and keeps everything accountable.
Education asset tracking has to work for students as well as staff. Stackroom lets a student request equipment from a phone, creates the custody record with a signature on approval, and keeps each department's register separate inside one organisation.
The problem
Sound familiar?
- Student equipment checkout is manual and hard to enforce.
- Gear is shared across departments with no clear ownership.
- Migrating off an old tool feels risky mid-semester.
How Stackroom helps
Everything you need, in one place
Student-ready checkout
Simple bookings and custody built for high-turnover student use.
Accountability
Signed handovers and custody history for every item and borrower.
Termly audits
Cycle counts make end-of-term reconciliation quick and verifiable.
How it runs
What this looks like day to day
- 1Catalogue
Register departmental equipment
Each department's equipment is recorded with its own visibility, so a media school and a science lab manage their own equipment within one system.
- 2Issue
Lend to students and staff
Items are signed out to a named borrower with a due date, which is what makes recovery at term end straightforward.
- 3Recall
Chase what is overdue
Overdue loans are flagged against the borrower, so chasing is a list rather than a memory exercise.
- 4Audit
Count at term end
Termly counts run from a phone, producing the evidence finance and department heads ask for.
In detail
The questions that come up next
Why is high-turnover lending different?
Because the borrower changes constantly and the peak is compressed into the start and end of term. The system has to make issuing fast enough for a queue of students, and recovery systematic enough to handle hundreds of simultaneous returns.
Can departments keep their equipment separate?
Yes. Departments see their own equipment while central services retain an institution-wide view, so autonomy and oversight coexist.
What about student accountability?
Loans are signed for with a due date, which establishes responsibility without requiring a deposit or a paper form.
Does it help with grant-funded equipment?
Yes. Funding source and purchase value can be recorded, which matters when reporting on grant-funded assets years after purchase.
Departments will not share a register unless they can keep theirs separate
A media school and a science faculty have almost nothing in common operationally, and a single flat register satisfies neither. Departments and configurable roles let each team manage its own equipment, see only its own, and still sit inside one organisation with one contract and one set of labels.
Students are numerous, transient, and not staff
A loan process that depends on a member of staff being at a desk does not survive a term. A request-and-approve flow a student can use from a phone — with approval creating the custody record and the signature — is what makes lending at volume workable, and it produces the accountability trail as a by-product.
Term boundaries are natural audit points
End of term is when equipment is meant to come back and when it quietly does not. A scoped cycle count per department at the boundary catches it while the student is still contactable, which is a very different situation from discovering it in September.
Grant-funded equipment has its own paper trail
Equipment bought with grant money often has to be accounted for separately and periodically evidenced. Categories, departments and a signed, exportable count give you that without a parallel spreadsheet.
FAQ
Questions, answered
Can students borrow without a full account?
They sign on the device at issue, so accountability is captured without provisioning system access for every student.
How do we handle equipment due back at term end?
Due dates and overdue flags produce a live list of outstanding loans, so recovery starts before the term ends rather than after.
Can we track equipment across multiple campuses?
Yes. Locations cover buildings, rooms and campuses, so a distributed institution stays in one register.
Is it suitable for maker spaces and workshops?
Yes. Tools, machines and consumables can all be tracked, with servicing and inspection dates for equipment that requires it.
Can we report on equipment by department for finance?
Yes. Values and counts can be grouped by department, which is the figure finance asks for at year end.
Can students borrow equipment themselves?
Yes. Requests go to whoever holds the approval permission, and approving creates the custody record. Handover captures a signature and generates a PDF agreement.
Can departments keep their equipment separate?
Yes. Departments and configurable roles mean each faculty manages and sees its own register inside one organisation.
How do we handle end-of-term recovery?
Each borrower's record lists everything they hold, so recovery is a checklist. A scoped count per department at the term boundary catches what has not come back.
Is there a cost per student?
No. Every plan includes unlimited users, which is usually the deciding factor for institutions — per-seat pricing does not survive a student body.
Ready to know where every asset is?
Start free — tag your first 100 assets and run a real checkout in your first session. No credit card required.