Where Are My Instruments?

Do you ever find yourself standing at the door of the band instrument storage room thinking – What instruments do I have? What condition are they in? What student has which instrument? Why is there so much duct tape holding these instruments together? When was the last time these instruments were replaced/repaired?

If you find yourself struggling to keep up with the inventory of your instruments, you are 100% NOT alone! It can be a very overwhelming task to tackle in a band program. It is not always the most fun activity either, so let’s be honest, if it is not fun, we may put it off for “another day.”

This information is to help you think about “why” it is so important to keep track of your instruments and give you some tools (and motivation) to help you with that process.

It is useful in so many ways to keep an up-to-date, accurate inventory of the instruments in your program. At the beginning of the year, when you need to assign instruments to students, when you have a student move into the program during the year and need to know what instruments are available, and most importantly, when you are asking for new or replacement instruments from the school, district or boosters and need data to support the financial investment for your program.

Whatever the reason, it would definitely be worth your time and energy to create an accurate, working instrument inventory for your program.

Cut Time is a great solution to help you with this daunting task! Cut Time is a proprietary partner instrument inventory system to give directors easy access to data related to the current instruments in their program.

This cloud-based software is mobile-friendly and can be set up for an individual school or expanded to include an entire district.

This Instrument Inventory Management System will help you:

• Create quick reports on the depreciated value of your instrument inventory
• Use data to understand the current condition of your instrument fleet
• Track individual instruments at the student level, including transfers between schools (Student profiles are FERPA compliant)
• Produce status reports for instrument repairs and monitor cumulative cost spent during the academic year
• Produce reports and build a capital outlay plan for long-term instrument replacement

All of this information will aid you in your path to a more efficient and data-driven instrument inventory management.

Many directors ask school administrators and districts what instruments they want for the program, with no substantial explanation of why they want it; this data will help you prove what your program needs based on real, live data! (we all know how much our administrators and districts love data-driven information) With this information, you are better equipped to be able to discuss purchasing new or replacement instruments for the future educational success of your program.

The goal is to help relieve you of spending so much time chasing down your instrument inventory and allow you to spend more time developing strong, effective lesson plans to allow your students to grow as individual musicians and as an ensemble. Before they can become stronger musicians, they need a functioning instrument to play!

Thank you to CutTime, a Band Directors Talk Shop business partner, for providing this article. 

Let CutTime help you crank up your world-class, well-oiled machine and take away the time that you spend on administrative tasks and give you back the time to focus on developing good humans and musicians! If you would like to find out more about CutTime, contact us at info@gocuttime.com or visit us at gocuttime.com.

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