Disposal & Sanitization
Retiring a laptop is not a status change. It is a chain of decisions somebody has to be able to defend a year later: who asked, who looked at the hardware, who authorised it, what happened to the data on it, where it went, and what the books lost or gained. Safekeep records all six, and will not let the equipment leave until the ones that matter are answered.
ams/accounting/disposals). Reading the list needs the Assets: Finance permit;
each step below needs its own. A shared link to ams/disposals lands you on the same
tab — there is one page, not two.
The path an asset takes
Five steps, in this order. The page shows them as a stepper on every disposal, so at a glance you can see where one has stopped and what it is waiting for.
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Request
Somebody says an asset should go, and why — obsolete, worn out, beyond repair, lost, stolen, or destined for sale, donation, trade-in or scrap. You may name the intended method now or leave it for the assessment. This is also where the asset is checked against the blockers below.
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Assess
Somebody technical records what state the equipment is actually in. Not optional: an approver should not sign off on destroying something nobody has looked at. An assessment may change the intended method — a machine found beyond repair stops being a sale.
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Approve
Authorisation, by somebody other than the requester. Where the asset is valuable enough, a second, finance signature is also required. Approval decides what happens next: an asset that held data goes to sanitization pending and cannot skip the wipe; anything else goes straight to ready to complete.
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Sanitize
The data is destroyed and the evidence recorded — or, where that is genuinely impossible, an exception is granted on the record. See below.
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Complete
The asset physically leaves. You record where it went, on what date, for how much, and what it cost to get rid of. The book closes, the gain or loss is struck, and the asset drops out of the active register.
Two exits sit alongside the path: Reject (the request is refused) and Cancel (it is abandoned). Both are final for that request and both free the asset, so a fresh request can be raised later — a new one, with its own date, rather than an old decision revived months afterwards.
What stops a request
Three checks run when a disposal is raised. Each one exists because letting it through would leave the register asserting something untrue.
| Blocker | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Still in somebody's custody | Disposing under an open custody would leave the register saying a disposed asset is issued to a named employee — and that employee still formally accountable for it. | Check the asset in, or close the custody, first. See Custody, Transfers & Returns. |
| An open serious fault | A high or critical fault nobody has closed usually means the asset's story is not finished — a warranty claim, a repair, an insurance matter. | Close the fault, or raise the disposal with the reason that matches it (next row). |
| Already disposed | The asset has already left. There is nothing to dispose of. | Nothing — check you have the right asset. |
Sanitization: the point of the whole workflow
Equipment that held company data must not leave the building still holding it. So an asset that carries data cannot reach completed without either recorded wipe evidence or a named, reasoned waiver. There is no third path, and no way to press past it.
When it is required
Two signals decide, and your administrator chooses which are consulted:
| Rule | Sanitization is required when… |
|---|---|
| Storage media | The asset is marked as containing storage media. |
| Classification | The asset's data classification is a sensitive one — confidential, restricted, secret or top secret. |
| Both (the default) | Either signal is present. |
| Manual | Nothing is derived — the requester ticks the box. |
Recording the wipe
The Sanitize form asks for more than a tick, because "it was wiped" is not defensible a year later and "purged with this tool on this date, performed by A, verified by B, certificate number N" is:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Method (required) | Clear, purge or destroy; cryptographic erase; factory reset; physical destruction; or a vendor-certified service. |
| Tool | What was used. The detail that makes a method claim checkable. |
| Performed by / Verified by | Deliberately two people. Whoever wiped it should not be the only person attesting that it was wiped. |
| Certificate | A vendor's destruction certificate number, where one exists. |
| Date and files | When it happened, plus photos or certificates as evidence. |
You may record a wipe even where none was required. Somebody who wiped a machine nobody asked them to wipe has done a good thing, and refusing to record it would teach people not to bother.
When the wipe is impossible: the exception
Some assets genuinely cannot be sanitized. A drive already physically destroyed cannot be "cleared"; a stolen laptop is not available to wipe. Refusing to model that would push people into fabricating evidence, which is strictly worse than an honest exception.
The second, finance signature
Above a configured value, disposing of an asset needs a finance approval on top of the operational one. The requirement is decided when the request is raised, from the asset's cost or book value, and it is shown on the disposal.
It is a second signature, not a second status: the disposal still moves forward on the operational approval, and if the approver happens to hold the finance permit their signature counts for both at once. Where they do not, the disposal simply cannot be completed until somebody who does signs. Blocking the whole approval instead would strand every disposal whose operations approver is not also a finance manager — which is most of them.
Completing the disposal
Completion is where everything irreversible happens, so it happens once and all at once. The form asks for:
| Field | Required when |
|---|---|
| Disposal date | Always. |
| Method | Always, and it must be one your administrator permits. |
| Proceeds | Only for a sale or a trade-in. Scrapping something for nothing is the normal case, and demanding an amount there would only teach people to type 1. |
| Recipient | Whenever the asset goes to a named party — sale, trade-in, donation, transfer out, return to lessor. |
| Disposal cost, files | Optional, but the cost belongs in the gain/loss figure and the files are the evidence somebody will ask for. |
On completion, in a single step:
| What happens | Detail |
|---|---|
| The book closes | Its carrying amount at the last posted period is captured as the value at disposal, and the book stops being touched by future depreciation runs. |
| Gain or loss is struck | proceeds − disposal cost − book value at disposal. Positive is a gain, negative a loss. |
| The asset is archived | It is stamped as disposed and moved onto your archived status label, so it leaves the active register while staying fully readable. |
| The record is written | An entry on the asset's activity feed, an audit-log entry, and a notification to the people involved. |
The certificate
A completed disposal can print a certificate of disposal: the asset and its tag and serial, the reason and method, the date and recipient, the full sanitization record — method, tool, who performed and who verified it, the certificate number — or the exception and its reason, the financial outcome, and a statement that the asset has been removed from the active register. It carries a quotable reference number of its own.
This is the document you hand to a recycler, attach to an insurance claim, or produce when somebody asks what happened to a machine that is no longer on the floor.
Following a disposal
Each disposal has its own page with the stepper, every field recorded so far, the evidence files, and a chronology of the decisions in the order they were taken — oldest first, so it reads the same direction as the stepper above it. Where a disposal is stuck, the step that is waiting says what it is waiting for.
The list itself filters by status, by reason, and by sanitization status, which is the view worth keeping: every disposal whose wipe has not been settled, in one place.
Who can do what
| Permit | Lets somebody… |
|---|---|
| Assets: Finance | See the disposal list and any disposal's page. Required by everybody below. |
| Disposal: Request & assess | Raise a request, record the technical assessment, cancel a request. |
| Disposal: Approve / reject / exception | Authorise or refuse a disposal, and grant a sanitization exception. |
| Disposal: Sanitize & complete | Record the wipe and complete the disposal. |
| Finance: Manage books & estimates | Give the second, finance signature above the value threshold. |
Requesting and approving are separate permits for the same reason preparing and posting are in depreciation: an approval the requester gave themselves evidences nothing. The full reference is in Permissions & Roles.