Asset Return & Warranty Reminders

Every morning at 09:19 AWRA checks two dates on your individually tracked assets and sends reminders by email and to the notification bell. The first is the expected return date on an asset that is out with someone: any return due within the Reminder Lead Time, or already overdue, is included. The second is the warranty end date: any warranty expiring within the Warranty Reminder Lead Time is included. Both lead times are set in Assets, Settings. The return lead time defaults to 3 days and the warranty lead time to 30, and either can be set anywhere from 0 to 365 days.

Because the run is daily, an overdue return keeps appearing on each morning’s reminder until the asset is checked back in or its return date is moved — the reminder is the chase, and nobody has to remember to send it. An asset that is available, retired or marked lost is not reminded about returns, and a warranty that has already ended drops off the warranty list. Setting the return lead time to 0 means only returns due today or already overdue are reminded.

In practice: a Nairobi media school lends cameras to students for weekend shoots, due back on Monday. With the return lead time at 3 days, Friday’s 09:19 run already lists Monday’s returns, so the equipment officer can remind students before they leave. On Tuesday, the two cameras still out appear again as overdue. The school’s editing workstations have warranties ending in five weeks; with the warranty lead time at 30 days they appear on the warranty reminder the week the window opens, early enough to book the supplier for a check before cover lapses.

Return reminders go two ways. The workspace’s admins receive the full list — every asset due back or overdue across the organization. Each custodian also receives their own items, provided they can be reached: a custodian with an email address, or one linked to a user login, is reminded of what they hold. A custodian with neither is still on the admins’ list, so nothing falls through; it only means the admin is the one who has to make the call. Warranty reminders go to admins only, because a warranty is the organization’s matter rather than the holder’s.

Each reminder is a row in Notification Preferences under Assets: Asset Returns Due or Overdue and Asset Warranties Expiring. Each row has its own email switch and in-app switch, so an organization can, for example, keep the bell copy of the warranty list and turn its email off. Switching a row off stops that channel for that reminder; it does not change the lead times or the dates on the assets.

In practice: a Kisumu construction firm has 40 power tools out with site foremen. Six foremen have logins, eight have only an email on their custodian record and three have neither. On a Monday with nine tools due, the foremen with a login or an email each receive the tools they hold; the three tools with unreachable custodians appear only on the admins’ full list, and the yard manager phones those sites. The finance team, who do not want the warranty email, switch its email off and keep the bell.

The reminder reads the expected return date on an individually tracked asset. A pooled check-out — twenty chairs or fifty textbooks lent from one quantity record — is not on it, so a pool’s overdue lines still need a named person working from the pool’s check-out list. Reminders on pooled check-outs are something the team can add to your workspace, as are an escalation chain that moves an overdue return from the holder to their department and then a manager, and reminders by SMS for custodians who are reached by phone.

The reminder also only knows the dates it is given. An asset checked out without an expected return date is never reminded, and an asset with no warranty end date never appears on the warranty list. So the setup habit matters more than the reminder: set an expected return date on every check-out you expect back, and record the warranty end date when the asset is registered. When a return is legitimately extended, move the return date rather than ignoring the daily reminder — a list everyone has learned to ignore is worse than none.

In practice: a Mombasa school lends class sets of textbooks from pools and laptops individually. The laptops look after themselves: the ICT teacher and each borrowing teacher receive the reminder. For the textbook pools, the librarian keeps a Friday slot to read each pool’s outstanding check-outs, because the daily reminder does not cover them. At registration, the bursar now refuses to save a new laptop without its warranty end date, so next year’s warranty reminders have something to read.