What do hardware policies control?
A hardware policy sets, per product type, how long a device is expected to be in service, how its value declines, and what happens to it when the person holding it leaves. These terms are what a buy-out price is calculated from, and what an entitlement's Renewal condition reads.
There is no page in company settings for editing them. Settings → Policies → Hardware Policies opens Entitlements instead. The terms below still apply — they are live data — but the grid this article describes is not reachable. Read it as what the terms mean rather than as instructions.
Two of them have moved onto the entitlement that covers a category: the Renewal condition sets how long someone keeps a device, and End of assignment sets what happens to it when they leave. See What can I set on an entitlement category?. Depreciation has no editing surface.
One policy per product type. A type you have never configured falls back to Velory's defaults.
The types are a fixed list Velory ships — laptop, monitor, keyboard, mouse, headset, webcam, docking station, cable, accessory and other. They are not your Categories tree, and nothing you do there adds a type here.
Before you begin
You need Admin access.
Contract terms
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Contract Term | How many months a device of this type is expected to serve |
| Early Renewal | How many months before term end a replacement becomes reasonable |
| Default Disposition | What normally happens to the device at the end: Return, Buyout, Keep as Gift or Transfer |
Early Renewal is the one that saves arguments. Set it to three months and a two-year laptop becomes replaceable at month 21 without anyone negotiating.
Depreciation
This is what a buyout price is calculated from.
- Method — Straight Line or Declining Balance
- Annual Rate (%) — how fast value comes off
- Minimum Buyout — a floor, so a fully depreciated device is never free
- Employee Discount (%) — taken off the depreciated value when an employee buys
Without a minimum buyout, a device past its term depreciates towards nothing and the buyout price stops being defensible. Set the floor.
Offboarding options
Three switches decide what a departing employee may do with a device of this type:
- Allow Employee Buyout — purchase at depreciated value
- Allow Keep as Gift — keep at no cost
- Allow Transfer — pass to someone else
Good to know
How is this different from offboarding policies?
Hardware policies describe the device: its term, its depreciation curve, what it may become. Offboarding policies describe the departure: which option applies to which asset type when someone actually leaves, and where a returned item is filed.
You will usually set both. Note that buy-out is currently switched off across offboarding, so the depreciation figures here inform renewal and reporting rather than a live buy-out offer — see How do I set up offboarding policies?.
What happens for a type with no policy?
Velory's defaults apply. Nothing breaks. Buyout figures will be generic rather than yours.
Does changing a policy re-price devices already out there?
Partly, and the split is worth knowing.
Depreciation method and rate are copied onto each device's contract when that contract is created. A change to them affects devices contracted afterwards — existing ones keep the curve they started with. That is deliberate: a device's depreciation should not be rewritten under a departing employee.
Minimum Buyout and Employee Discount are read from the policy at the moment a buyout is calculated. If either changes, every existing device's buyout price moves immediately.
So a change to the rate is safe mid-flight; a change to the floor or the discount is not.
When is the buyout price worked out?
On demand, from the contract start date and the months elapsed. There is no stored price to go stale, which is why a discount change lands instantly.
Was this article helpful?