IT Asset Management Without Spreadsheets: How to Set Up Snipe-IT on Saplo

An IT department that keeps records of equipment in a spreadsheet will sooner or later lose control of it: the laptop's serial number column doesn't match reality, no one remembers who was last issued a monitor, and the expiration date of an Office license or equipment warranty sits in a cell that you have to remember to check yourself. Paid systems like Freshservice solve this problem, but they charge around $20 per month, or $234 per year, and the bill grows with each additional agent on the team. Snipe-IT is an open-source IT asset management system: laptops, phones, monitors, and accessories with a full history of issues and returns, QR and bar codes for scanning when issued to an employee, and alerts for expiring licenses and warranties. You host it on your own Box, without paying for another resource in the registry. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to set up Snipe-IT on Saplo.

What should your IT equipment inventory contain?

A good IT equipment inventory answers three questions in a few seconds: what the company has, who uses it, and when something expires. For this to work, each item in the register needs at least these fields:

• Inventory number and serial number, meaning what's on the sticker and what's on the invoice.
• Model, category, and manufacturer, so you can, for example, count all laptops older than four years.
• Purchase date, supplier, and invoice number, useful for complaints and accounting settlements.
• Warranty end date, with a reminder before the deadline, not after a breakdown.
• To whom it was issued and where it is located, along with the issue and return date.
• Status: in use, in storage, in service, to be scrapped.
• Software licenses assigned to a person or device, with the renewal date.

You can set up these columns in a spreadsheet in five minutes, but no one ensures they're up-to-date. Snipe-IT has them all built-in and automatically records the history of issues and returns with every change.

Why Snipe-IT Instead of a Spreadsheet and Freshservice

A spreadsheet is free, but it has drawbacks that only become apparent after a few months of use, not immediately at startup:

• a spreadsheet entry doesn't manage itself, so you have to remember to check software license expiration dates or equipment warranties yourself, instead of getting a notification,
• issuing and returning equipment is a manual note, and after several people leave the company, it's difficult to reconstruct who currently has which laptop or phone,
• lack of QR and bar codes, so each piece of equipment must be identified by a manually entered serial number, instead of scanning a label.

Freshservice and similar paid systems solve these problems, but they charge about $20 per agent per month, or $234 annually, and your company's equipment data resides on the infrastructure of an external provider. Snipe-IT has none of these disadvantages: it's a complete equipment register with issue history, automatically generated QR and bar codes, and alerts for expiring licenses and warranties, hosted on your Box for a fraction of Freshservice's annual cost.

Requirements

To deploy Snipe-IT on Saplo, you'll need:

• A Box with Docker running (the engine automatically enables it when you install from the catalog; container nesting is required, which Saplo provides by default).
• The recipe declares a minimum of 1 GB RAM and 5 GB of disk space, but with exactly 1 GB RAM on the Box, there's no reserve left for the system and other applications. Therefore, the realistic choice is Box M for $69 per year (2 GB RAM, 30 GB disk). After installing Snipe-IT, 768 MB of memory and 20 GB of disk space remain on it.
• A domain or subdomain *.saploapp.pl included with every plan, where the Snipe-IT panel will be located.
• You DO NOT manually set up a separate database; Snipe-IT gets its own empty database in Saplo's shared MySQL, and the engine automatically provides access credentials.

You can find a full description of the application and its place in the catalog on the Snipe-IT on Saplo page.

Step-by-step installation

1. In the Saplo panel, go to App catalog and select Snipe-IT ("Business Tools" category).
2. Select a Box with at least 1 GB of free RAM, where the application will be installed, and the domain or subdomain under which the equipment registry will operate.
3. Confirm the installation. The engine downloads the official snipe/snipe-it image, generates a random application secret, connects the container to the Saplo MySQL database, and exposes the panel via the Box's nginx with a free SSL certificate.
4. The first container start triggers the database schema migration, so the installation may take longer than the standard dozen seconds. The engine waits until the application actually responds via HTTP before considering the installation complete.
5. After the installation is complete, the Snipe-IT login panel is available under the specified domain.

Your first account and your first equipment in the registry

Snipe-IT doesn't have a default admin account or a ready-made password in a file. Instead, it has a setup wizard that appears when you first visit the site.

1. Go to the domain address. The wizard will ask for company details and an administrator account, which you set up yourself, without any default login credentials.
2. In the Settings -> Asset Categories section, add equipment categories, for example, laptops, phones, monitors, and accessories, so that each item goes into the correct group.
3. In the Manufacturers and Models sections, enter the specific models of equipment your company uses. This speeds up adding more instances of the same device.
4. In the People section, add employees to whom equipment can be assigned, so that issuance and return are directly linked to a specific person, not a general entry.
5. Add the first piece of equipment with a serial number, purchase date, and warranty expiration date. Snipe-IT will generate a QR or barcode label for it, ready to print and affix.
6. Assign equipment to an employee using the Checkout button. The history of issuance and return is automatically saved and visible later on that item's card.

You add software licenses using the same mechanism: you enter the number of available seats and the renewal date, and Snipe-IT keeps track of how many spots are free and when the license expires.

Snipe-IT on Saplo vs. spreadsheet and Freshservice

FAQ

Do I need a separate database? No, Snipe-IT gets its own empty database in Saplo's shared MySQL, and the engine itself passes access data to the container. You don't create or configure the database manually.

Does Snipe-IT send notification emails? By default, email sending is disabled, so notifications about expiring licenses and warranties are saved in the panel but don't go to your inbox. To enable sending, you need to configure SMTP data in the container. Contact Saplo Support, we will help you set it up.

Can I print QR or barcode labels to stick on equipment? Yes, Snipe-IT automatically generates a label with a QR or barcode for each item, without additional configuration after installation.

Is there a limit to the number of equipment or employees in the registry? No, the open-source Snipe-IT license does not count equipment items or user accounts. The real limit is the Box resources, mainly disk space for photos and attachments for individual items.

Can data from a spreadsheet be imported into Snipe-IT? Yes, Snipe-IT has a built-in CSV file importer for equipment, licenses, and people, so an existing spreadsheet can be uploaded instead of manually entering the entire registry from scratch.

If your IT department currently keeps track of equipment in a spreadsheet and is losing track, contact us, we'll help you choose a Box and set up Snipe-IT.