How IT teams automate laptop returns with prepaid shipping kits using Rippling IT

What you'll learn

• How to streamline laptop retrieval for remote or hybrid teams

• How Rippling automates return packaging, shipping labels, and device collection

• How Inventory Management and Device Management work together to simplify offboarding

What you'll need

• Rippling IT with Device Management

• Rippling Inventory Management to automate shipping and warehouse storage

The problem

Retrieving laptops from employees can be one of the most time-consuming and error-prone tasks for IT teams. Coordinating return boxes, shipping labels, tracking numbers, and manual follow-up takes hours. Devices often return late, arrive damaged, or go missing entirely. When return logistics depend on back-and-forth emails, IT ends up chasing employees, losing inventory accuracy, and delaying laptop redeployment for the next hire.

For distributed teams, these challenges multiply quickly. Managing dozens or hundreds of device returns across regions becomes operationally taxing. Without automation, IT has little visibility into where a device is, what condition it is in, or when it will be ready to reassign. This slows down offboarding, increases security risk, and leaves expensive hardware underutilized.

The hypothesis

When IT teams automate laptop retrieval through Rippling IT, they can eliminate manual shipping logistics entirely. By combining automated shipping with full lifecycle device management, IT can retrieve laptops predictably, close offboarding tasks faster, and keep inventory accurate without touching a single device.

The solution

1. Use Inventory Management to hand off physical logistics

With Rippling Inventory Management, you can choose to have Rippling retrieve and store computers and monitors instead of managing returns yourself. Any time you unassign a device or offboard an employee, Rippling gives you a choice: have Rippling retrieve and store the device in a secure warehouse, or arrange the return yourself.

2. Trigger return packaging as part of offboarding

During the offboarding flow, Device Management and Inventory Management work together so you can decide how to handle the employee’s work device. If you select the option to have Rippling retrieve and store the device, Rippling sends return packaging and a prepaid shipping label to the address you specify for the employee. The employee uses that box and label to send the device back to the warehouse.

3. Choose how to handle data on the device

As part of the termination flow, Rippling can also help you manage user accounts and data on the device. You can leave the device as is, lock user accounts, lock the device (macOS only), perform a soft wipe that removes user accounts and data but leaves the rippling admin account, or perform a full wipe that erases all data including the operating system. If you are sending the device to the warehouse, it will be fully wiped once it reaches the warehouse regardless of the data option you selected.

4. Let the warehouse wipe, inspect, and store devices

When the device arrives at the Rippling warehouse, Rippling fully wipes it to factory settings, reinstalls the operating system, installs the Rippling Agent if required, inspects the device to assess its condition, updates its status and condition in your Rippling inventory, and stores it securely so it is ready to be reassigned to another employee.

4. Track return progress in Rippling

When you request a warehouse return, Rippling creates an order you can track on the Orders tab in the Devices app. If the termination is scheduled for a future date and time, the order appears with a reason of Offboarding and a status of Paused, and the shipment will occur at the termination date and time. If you prefer, you can release the order manually so the device is unassigned and return packaging is sent before the termination date, and both the former employee and admins receive emails as key events occur, such as packaging shipped, delivered, device shipped, received, and stored.

The impact

✓ Return packaging and prepaid labels sent to employees automatically

✓ IT no longer has to manage shipping logistics or track inbound devices manually

✓ Returned laptops are wiped, tested, and stored without IT involvement

✓ Offboarding becomes predictable, secure, and easy to scale

By automating laptop returns through Rippling IT, companies replace a manual, error-prone workflow with an end-to-end logistics engine. IT teams reclaim hours of operational time, improve security, and maintain a clean, ready-to-use hardware inventory for new hires.

FAQs