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Laptop Return Chase

Example prompt: "Two weeks before someone's last day, organise the courier collection for their laptop and headset, send them the packing instructions, and chase me if it hasn't been received and wiped a week after they've left."

The Problem

Getting laptops back from leavers is the kind of job that is easy when you do it on day one and gets exponentially harder for every week that passes. The leaver is busy with handover and notice-period meetings, the IT lead is on the new-starter queue, and the box of packing material lives in a different office than the courier label. Six months on, the asset spreadsheet has a row that says "MacBook Pro 2022, with Sarah" and Sarah left in February, and nobody knows whether the laptop is in her loft or whether somebody quietly wiped and reissued it and forgot to update the row.

How GloriaMundo Solves It

We build a workflow that runs daily and looks at the HR People sheet for anyone whose leaving date is exactly fourteen days out, then again on the leaving date itself and weekly after that until the kit comes back. On the fourteen-day-out run, an integration step reads the asset register for the leaver's serial number, model, and the accessories on issue, and an LLM step drafts a short email to the leaver with their assigned courier collection date, a one-page packing checklist, and the prepaid label as an attachment that the IT team has pre-printed. An integration step sends it through Gmail and posts a confirmation to the IT lead so the lead can drop the packaging into post that day. On the last working day, a second integration step sends a one-line confirmation and a polite reminder. One week after the leaving date, a conditional step checks the asset register — if the laptop has been marked as received and wiped, the row is closed and a confirmation goes to the leaver and to the IT lead; if not, a chase email and a Slack DM go out. Two weeks after the leaving date, the case is escalated to the IT lead with a draft of a stronger reminder for review before sending. Glass Box preview shows the leaver, the asset, the courier date, and the drafted messages before anything goes out.

Example Workflow Steps

  1. Trigger (scheduled): Every day at 08:00, look at the HR People sheet for anyone whose leaving date is fourteen days out, the leaving date itself, or any past-leaving-date leaver whose kit has not been received and wiped.
  2. Step 1 (integration): For each matched leaver, read the asset register for the issued laptop serial number, model, and accessories on issue.
  3. Step 2 (LLM): On the fourteen-day-out run, draft a short email with the assigned courier collection date, a one-page packing checklist, and a note that the prepaid label is enclosed.
  4. Step 3 (integration): Send the email through Gmail, attach the prepaid courier label, and post a confirmation to the IT lead in Slack so the team can drop the packaging into the post that day.
  5. Step 4 (conditional): One week after the leaving date, check the asset register — if the laptop is marked as received and wiped, send the confirmation to the leaver and close the row; otherwise raise a chase.
  6. Step 5 (LLM): For chase cases, draft a polite reminder email and a parallel Slack DM with the laptop serial, the courier label tracking number, and a return-by date.
  7. Step 6 (integration): Two weeks after the leaving date, escalate any still-outstanding cases to the IT lead with a draft of a firmer reminder for review before it is sent.

Integrations Used

  • Google Sheets — the HR People sheet for leaving dates and the asset register for serial numbers, models, accessories, and received-and-wiped status
  • Gmail — the email path to the leaver for collection instructions, confirmation, and chase reminders
  • Slack — the daily confirmation to the IT lead, the chase DMs, and the two-week escalation

Who This Is For

IT operations leads at companies that issue and recover laptops centrally and where the asset register lives in a sheet rather than a full MDM platform, typically 30 to 300 staff with a hybrid or distributed workforce.

Time & Cost Saved

The chase itself is ten minutes per week when it is on top of mind and a multi-hour audit when it falls off and has to be rebuilt from six months of leavers. The hidden cost is the kit that quietly walks — a 1,500-pound MacBook recovered six months late is often not recovered at all. The workflow runs the chase every day so nothing falls through, and the saving is partly the IT lead's time and partly the meaningful reduction in unrecovered hardware over a year.