How to use age-based reporting

This article shows how to effectively use our reporting to combine the knowledge of an asset's age with its warranty dates to help determine when client devices should be retired.

The Hardware Lifecycle Report provides a summary of hardware assets within a client where you can quickly and accurately check on how many hardware assets are covered under warranty, how many are due soon for warranty renewal, or need renewal.

The most common use for age-based reporting is when you replace workstations or other hardware assets based on their age, rather than their warranty status. This contrasts with servers for example, where maintaining warranties on such a mission-critical device is important.

The following sections are included in this article:

How the Maximum replacement age interacts with assets without warranty coverage

The maximum replacement age in the replacement settings is the number of years after which an asset should normally be considered for retirement and be replaced.

Server replacement age - Servers do not have a Maximum replacement age as servers are considered mission-critical. Servers should never be considered to be without warranty coverage and are deemed to be overdue as soon as warranty coverage expires.

Let’s assume that a client, identified here as Sea DartBlue, has a Workstation replacement policy of 3 years and the client needs to be informed 6 months prior to any asset replacement. The relevant Client hardware settings should be set as follows.

How are these settings reflected in a Hardware Lifecycle report?

In the following image from a Hardware Lifecycle report, all Workstations (except for 2) over the Maximum replacement age of 3 years are indicated by the Red square replacement status color code. This means that these devices are considered "overdue" as the assets are both 3+ years old and the warranty coverage (displayed in the Expires column) has lapsed.

The primary examples displayed in this article are from the default Hardware Lifecycle report (with CPU, RAM, and Storage information not included). A secondary example showing customized hardware lifecycle reports when assets have expired is provided below. Customized reports only support color codes for expired assets.

 

Custom Hardware Lifecycle Report - Workstations over a maximum replacement age of 3 years

HLR_settings_1a_custom.png

Replacement Status

The asset replacement statuses are categorized into Supported, Due soon, Overdue, and Unknown. Located in the last column to the right in the Hardware Lifecycle report, asset replacement statuses are represented in the replacement status column by color codes.

  • Green (Supported) - This asset is within the Maximum replacement age setting and is not required to be replaced.

  • Amber (Due Soon) - This asset is within the Maximum replacement age setting and your Due Soon threshold to be replaced.

    • There are scenarios where the maximum replacement age of the asset has been exceeded but the asset may still be under warranty coverage. Depending on the *Due Soon for replacement* value, the replacement status may show as Due Soon or Supported.

  • Red (Overdue) - The asset replacement age has been met (or exceeded) and it should be replaced.

  • Unknown - There is no warranty lookup data available for this asset.

How warranty statuses affect replacement status

Warranty expiry dates are used as the end-of-life date by default. The warranty status of hardware assets is also color-coded and is reflected in the Expires column of the Hardware Lifecycle report.

  • Black (default) - This asset is currently under warranty

  • Amber - This asset is currently under warranty, but is due soon for warranty renewal.

  • Red - This asset is no longer under warranty.

What this means is that even though the Maximum replacement age is set to 3 and these Workstations are 3+ years old, their warranties are set to expire after 4 years as indicated in the following example.

The end result is the Workstations are considered supported, but due soon for either warranty renewal or full replacement based on a Due Soon for replacements settings of 180 days.

From the details of a hardware asset, you can edit some details of the asset such as the purchase date and warranty expiration date. If cd-ShinesBat.ef, an asset from the previous example, had its warranty expire 1 year earlier, the Hardware Lifecycle report would show this asset as Overdue.

Using the In-app edit, the warranty expiry date was moved back 1 year to expire on 2021-03-24. The resultant change was that this device is now considered overdue as the asset is both 3+ years old and the warranty coverage has lapsed.

The Hardware Lifecycle report displays that information accordingly. The change in the report for cd-ShinesBat.ef is:

How Maximum replacement age interacts with warranty coverage

If the Maximum replacement age exceeds warranty coverage of assets, any assets within the replacement age value that do not have warranty coverage are displayed as Supported or Due Soon.

For example, adjusting the Maximum replacement value setting to 7 yrs, any assets within the replacement age value that have warranty coverage that has lapsed or will lapse prior to the age replacement value being met are displayed as Supported or Due Soon.

In the following example report, the maximum replacement age is set to 7 years after which these assets should be considered for replacement. In the following image, all Workstations (except for 1) under the Maximum replacement age of 7 years are indicated by the Green square replacement status color code. This means that these devices are considered Supported as the assets are under 7 years old and not covered under warranty.

The asset, vw-BeyondExlipse.xy, displays as Due Soon because the Due soon for replacement notification is set for 180 days.

It’s also immediately recognizable that out of the 3 active warranties, 2 are due for warranty renewal within 180 days and one does not fall within that range as the warranty is set to expire 06.11.2023 (over a year out from the writing of this article).

Does the replacement value setting affect the Hardware Lifecycle report?

The replacement value has no effect on reporting but is simply your estimate as a "Sales Opportunity" based on an average dollar amount per expired asset type. Generally, we recommend a blended value of the average replacement cost.

These estimates do appear at the end of a generated Hardware Lifecycle report (if the Show budgeting checkbox is selected) as an example of a replacement budget spread out over four quarters. These estimates are for devices that are overdue or due within a set number of days before an asset is marked as Due soon.

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