What’s the best way to keep track of hardware assets and software licenses during employee offboarding?

Using an IT asset management tool combined with mobile device management (MDM) is a solid approach. Assign devices and licenses during onboarding, and set them to automatically reclaim on offboarding. Keeping everything in one central system really helps, as spreadsheets alone won’t cut it for larger teams.

I recommend trying out Snipe-IT. It's free if you self-host it, and many users find it effective for tracking assets. We switched to it about a year ago and love it. We opted for their hosting service since it’s quite affordable.

If you primarily use open-source software and applications, you might not have to worry much about licenses. It's much simpler when you avoid proprietary tools, which can streamline your tracking process.

In my smaller company, with around 110 users, we just use spreadsheets for tracking computers and monitors. They're automated with onboarding, offboarding, and swap scripts. We previously tried Snipe-IT but found we didn’t have time to set it up right. For now, the spreadsheet works fine for us.