Stackroom vs Cheqroom

Both tools do checkout well, and both now reach past the loan

Reserve, check out with condition capture, check back in. Cheqroom does this cleanly and so does Stackroom, and anyone moving between them will recognise the workflow immediately. If checkout is the whole of your problem, this comparison is close and you should pick on feel.

What happens after the return is where the packaging differs. Cheqroom's maintenance workflow turns a flagged issue into a work order with repair notes, costs, warranty details and a history, schedules preventive maintenance, and blocks bookings while an item is being serviced. On its pricing page that workflow is a separately priced add-on on every plan, and the operators who carry out the work are priced in addition to admins.

In Stackroom the return records condition on the asset itself, and a fault becomes a maintenance ticket with a status, a cost and an expected-back date. An item in maintenance cannot be issued, so the next team cannot take something that is sitting on a bench in pieces, and recurring maintenance plans raise tickets ahead of the date. Warranty, AMC and CMC cover live on the same record, so the first question on any repair, whether it is still covered, is answered without opening a filing cabinet.

Per-administrator pricing changes how a system gets used

This is a structural difference rather than a feature one, and it has more effect on day-to-day life than most feature rows. Cheqroom bills per administrator, from a three-admin minimum. When each additional administrator has a price, organisations ration administrators. The usual result is one person who runs the system, which works until they are on leave.

Stackroom prices on the organisation. Every plan includes unlimited users, and what each person can do is set by a configurable role rather than by which seat was paid for — so a warehouse supervisor, three team leads and the person covering reception can all be given the access they need without a procurement conversation. Whether that matters to you depends entirely on how many hands run your gear.

Credit where it is due on the other half: Cheqroom does not price on item count either — items are unlimited on every plan. Neither tool makes you choose which cheap, easily lost items are worth registering.

Counting is a separate workflow from checkout

Checking gear out and counting gear are different jobs. Checkout answers “where should this be”; an audit answers “where is it actually”. Cheqroom treats this properly: its audits and spotchecks scan by location or booking and mark each item verified, damaged or missing. On its pricing page they start on the Business plan, so a Core customer counts outside the system.

Stackroom's cycle counts run from a phone. You scope a count to a location or category, walk it scanning, and each item is recorded verified or missing as you go, with where the check was actually taken. The count closes with a note, and the audit summary and missing-at-audit reports export for finance or an auditor. Discrepancies stay attached to the assets, so the follow-up is a list rather than a memory.

Where the scan map matters

Every Stackroom scan records a location if the device offers one, which accumulates into a map and a per-asset trail. For a single studio with a cage, that is a curiosity. For gear that moves between venues, sites or vehicles, it is the difference between “it was signed out to Dan three weeks ago” and “it was last seen at the Leeds site on Tuesday morning”.

Cheqroom can update an item's geo position when it is scanned in the mobile app and shows the last scanned position on the item's map. Stackroom keeps the position of every scan, so you see the trail as well as the last point. If your equipment lives in one building, you will not miss either.

University AV departments, media production and creative teams

These are the teams Cheqroom is built for. Its own positioning leads with media and entertainment and with higher education: students booking equipment themselves, QR scanning at the counter, alerts when gear is overdue, and issues flagged when an item comes back. If a loan desk is the whole job, Cheqroom is a strong fit and we would say so.

Stackroom covers the same desk. Bookings check availability and overlaps on a shared calendar and move to overdue or no-show on their own. A checkout goes to a named person with a due date and a handover signature, and an overdue loan raises a notification. Returns record condition and a signature, and anyone holding an item can report a fault, which becomes a maintenance ticket.

The difference is how much of the equipment's life sits in the same record. A department that also services projectors on a schedule, holds AMC contracts on its AV estate, counts the store each term and reports book value to finance will find all of that in Stackroom. A production team with one kit room and a busy shoot calendar may never need it.