Collection Week, Scanned as It Happened
How Union City Public Schools ran its end-of-year Chromebook collection through UserAuthGuard, two workers per building and every return scanned on the spot, and turned the count into next year's purchase plan
The Challenge
End-of-year collection is where large districts break. Union City Public Schools manages more than 13,000 active Chromebooks, and like many large districts, full collection had historically been impractical. Collecting, scanning, and documenting that many devices meant weeks of chaos and records that never quite matched reality.
A district that can't collect can't count. And a district that can't count can't budget: with no reliable inventory, "how many Chromebooks do we need to buy next year?" was a guess, not a number.
Collection Week
This year, Union City ran district-wide collection through UserAuthGuard. The operations team stationed two workers in each building, and devices were bulk-scanned straight into the system as students turned them in. Every scan updated the device's record instantly: who returned it, where, and when.
Eduardo Peralta, who ran it, puts the count at almost 12,000 Chromebooks in under a week. No paper lists, no spreadsheets, no loose ends, and no scramble afterward to figure out what was missing, because the system knew as each device was scanned.
And every scan carried intel. Check-in isn't just a count. It's the moment the whole year's records get reconciled:
"We collected almost 12,000 Chromebooks in under a week with just two workers in each building: everything scanned straight into UserAuthGuard, everything documented, no stress. And when it was time to plan purchases, the Fleet Lifecycle Planner showed us exactly how many devices we had and how many we needed to buy."
Before & After
Before UserAuthGuard
- • Full collection was impractical: weeks of manual check-in
- • Paper lists and spreadsheets, updated after the fact
- • Missing devices discovered months later, if ever
- • No exact count of working devices in the fleet
- • Purchase planning based on estimates
After UserAuthGuard
- • District-wide collection run through one system
- • Bulk scan-in: every return documented instantly
- • Missing devices flagged in real time, by student
- • Exact fleet count the moment collection ended
- • Purchase forecast from real inventory data
From Count to Purchase Plan
Collection fed directly into purchasing. With every device scanned in, the district used UserAuthGuard's Fleet Lifecycle Planner to see exactly how many devices they had, which models were aging toward their Auto Update Expiration, and how many they needed to buy for next year.
For a district this size, that forecast is extremely challenging to build by hand. It requires an accurate count, per-device age and model data, and AUE dates, all current at the same moment. After collection week, Union City had all of it in one report: a purchase number they could take straight to the budget process.
More From Union City
Collection week was possible because every device was already assigned and accountable. Read how Union City got there:
Dreading collection season?
Free: every device and every assignment gap, no device cap, no credit card. See how UserAuthGuard handles it before paying to enforce.