Enhanced Inventory Accuracy, Accountability, and Audit Readiness

DeKalb County School District (DCSD) is Georgia’s third-largest school system. The sprawling district serves a diverse population of over 92,000 students. Students and parents speak over 185 languages and represent over 155 countries. DCSD’s primary goal is to prepare students for college and careers through rigorous, relevant classroom instruction related to each child’s needs.

The Challenge

You can tell just by looking at the numbers that DeKalb County School District is huge. Lance McConkey is the comptroller responsible for tracking all capital assets in each of its seven regions. Before he started working there, auditors found that because annual inventories were not routinely performed, there was no accurate listing of all the equipment the district owned.

As comptroller for the district, Lance’s role was to take over capital assets, clear those audit findings, and develop a way to keep track of the district’s inventory moving forward.

The Solution

At the top of the list of inventory and assets to track: 140 missing school buses. Of course, they were not really missing — but they should have been listed as inventory. Lance needed to find an inventory tracking process that was more accurate than Excel spreadsheets, something designed for large capital assets, not just the small stuff that can be barcoded and scanned — and it needed to link to their accounting software. He and his team decided on Frontline’s Asset Management, in addition to Frontline’s Physical Inventory services.

The Results

The first thing Frontline did was to initiate a thorough inventory for the entire district, building by building and room by room. They identified and labeled every piece of equipment. With that data, Lance could conduct a complete inventory audit.

After initially using Asset Management only for capital assets, Lance realized it could accommodate unlimited users. That led to expanding the program into other departments, especially instructional technology. When the COVID pandemic created a high demand for portable laptop computers, Asset Management was just what the technology team needed to track Chromebooks for over 90,000 students. The School Nutrition Department can now track all their equipment, large and small, and use the data to meet federal reporting requirements.

Accountability

Before Lance went to work for DeKalb County Schools, his department had only one person. Since it was impossible for one person to go to 140 different sites to conduct inventories, that task was assigned to building principals. Inventory lists were printed on spreadsheets, but barcodes weren’t available, so it required walking around each building and looking for every item to account for it. It was a difficult task, and the data was not always reliable. Auditors often found errors or couldn’t locate items listed.

Frontline’s Asset Management allows DCSD to use barcodes and scanners and records the date and time each item was inventoried. Reports are far more accurate than in the past. Any department can use the system to track inventory and generate reports for internal use or to meet federal requirements. And the system doesn’t just track purchases — it identifies the funding sources for every item.

Accuracy

Remember, the primary goal for DeKalb was to avoid findings during an audit. There’s no way one person could accurately complete an inventory using a paper checklist in such a large district.

To improve their inventory process, the capital asset team grew from one to four people, and Frontline Asset Management was implemented. DCSD no longer had to rely on site administrators to inventory their buildings before the summer break. Instead, four people with scanners could locate and identify every capital item in a school within one to two hours.