CC · Core Concepts
Spares
Keeping spare and returned devices on a list of their own.
3 min read
Spare is one of the three built-in hardware statuses — Active, Spare and Retired — for devices you own but keep on the shelf rather than in use: a leaver's laptop waiting for the next starter, a replacement kept for break-fix swaps, surplus stock. Spares stay off the Hardware page and out of your in-service counts, Home, renewals and spend-by-tag views, and raise no alerts, while still counting toward your total inventory value. Where they do appear, they're shown apart: Fleet has a Spares column per client, Insights' Spend by Hardware Type stacks them as their own segment, and Asset Inventory, Hardware Lifecycle and the QBR Pack list them in a section of their own. A spare isn't assigned to anyone: moving a device to spares releases the people it had, and you can't assign someone to a spare until it's back in service. (Spares used to be called B-Stock.)
- 01
Turn spares tracking on
The organisation owner switches it on under Settings → Organization → Inventory & retention → Spares tracking. Once it's on, a Spares page appears under Organise in the sidebar and "Move to spares" becomes available on hardware. Organisations that don't hold spares can leave it off and never see it. Turning it off while spares exist asks whether to return them to service, retire them or delete them first — it can't be turned off while any remain, or they would vanish from every list.
- 02
Move a device to spares
Choose Move to spares from a device's ⋯ menu in the Hardware list, or select several rows and use Bulk Actions → Move to spares. The device leaves the hardware lists and shows on the Spares page instead; anyone it was assigned to is released, and the confirmation says how many. Licences installed on it and certificates deployed on it are unlinked too — a per-device licence gets its seat back — and nothing can be installed or deployed on a spare until it's back in service. The move is on the device's History tab, and each licence and certificate it unlinked says so on its own. A device synced from Microsoft 365 can't be moved while Intune has it — Intune owns its status — and a bulk move skips it. Once the sync sees it leave (wiped, unenrolled or deleted), its page and the Hardware list offer Back to spares next to Confirm retirement. It stays a spare until it's re-enrolled; then Intune takes it back and returns it to service by itself, and its History says so.
- 03
Work from the Spares page
Organise → Spares lists every spare, youngest first — usually the one to hand out. The figures at the top count your spares by type, how many are nearing or past end of life, and their ages; each row shows its age, its end of life (past end of life in red: retire it rather than hand it out) and the folder it's kept in. Spares raise no alerts, and warranty is shown but never counts against a spare. Add spare creates a device straight onto the shelf, Export downloads the list as CSV, and Return to service — in a spare's ⋯ menu, on its own page, or in Bulk Actions for several — makes it Active again; pick a person in the same dialog to issue it to them in one step (assigned, with one line on its History tab). A spare past end of life gets a warning there, not a block. Use as a replacement… in a spare's ⋯ menu swaps it in for a device being replaced: the device's people, licences, certificates and folder move to the spare in one step. When you offboard someone, their returned devices can go straight to spares too.