The value of corporate equipment starts to drop from the day it is purchased, but the decision to sell it is almost always made too late. A guide for founders, finance teams, and IT managers on how and when to evaluate the exit of hardware that is no longer in use.
In most companies with distributed teams, the decision on what to do with a computer that is no longer in use is never made. It is postponed. The equipment remains stored at someone's house, in an office closet, or in a warehouse, waiting for a reassignment that in many cases never comes, because when the next hire arrives, a new device is purchased.
This postponement has a cost that does not appear in any report. While the equipment waits, it loses value. And unlike other assets, hardware does not lose value evenly: it loses it in stages, driven by factors that the company does not control and is rarely looking at.
In our article on what BuyBack is, we explain how the repurchase mechanism works and what it solves. This article answers the next question, which is the one that really defines how much is recovered: when is the best time to make the decision.
What is the residual value of corporate equipment
Residual value is what a device is still worth in the market after having been in use. It is not the same as book value. A company can have a notebook fully depreciated on its books (zero value) and that same notebook can have a considerable resale value. And vice versa: a piece of equipment that still appears as an asset on the balance sheet may have no real demand in the market.
This distinction matters because the two curves move for different reasons. Accounting depreciation responds to an internal policy and a fiscal criterion. Residual value responds to the market: which models are being sought, in what condition, in which country. When a company decides what to do with its hardware by looking only at the balance sheet, it is using the wrong instrument.
Why hardware loses value while waiting
The depreciation of stored equipment is inevitable and there is nothing to be done about it. What is a decision, however, is how long it is allowed to run without taking any action.
Therein lies the blind spot. "Let's keep it just in case" seems like a prudent decision, but the cost appears later, when that equipment is needed for something specific and is no longer suitable for the profile that needs it, or when it is finally decided to let it go and it is worth significantly less than what it was worth the day it became available.
This does not mean rushing the replacement or upgrading ahead of time. It means treating the exit moment of a device as a decision that is made with judgment and within a defined period. Companies that plan their upgrades have two advantages over those that postpone them. The first is that they upgrade when it suits them and not when there is no alternative left. The second is that the equipment being replaced still has value, and that value can be utilized.
The four moments when it is advisable to evaluate a sale
There is no universal rule on the age of hardware that applies to all cases. What there are, however, are four situations that act as a trigger to put the equipment on the table and make a decision, instead of leaving it waiting.
Situation | Signal that the time has come | What to check before deciding |
|---|---|---|
Fleet renewal | The purchase of new equipment has been approved for an area or for the entire company | How many devices are leaving, what condition they are in, and where they are physically located |
Offboarding with no possible reassignment | Someone left the company and there is no upcoming hire with the same technical profile | Whether the equipment fits the company's current standard or has become outdated |
Change in equipment standards | The company defines a new base model for a role or migrates to a different operating system | Which part of the inventory falls outside the new standard |
Office closure or restructuring | Equipment that was assigned to a physical space or to a dissolved team is freed up | Where the equipment is physically located and the cost to move or store it |
Internal reassignment always seems like the most obvious option: returning equipment to operation avoids a purchase. However, it is not always the most convenient; when the freed equipment is in one country and the person who would need it is in another, international shipping can cost more than what is saved, in addition to adding time to onboarding. And when there is no recipient in sight, storing the equipment is an option that will depend on many factors.
In this situation, many companies choose to buy new equipment for the incoming employee and dispose of the one that became free. The decision is not "reassign or sell" as a general principle. It is a concrete calculation, made on a case-by-case basis, which depends mostly on where the equipment is and how much time will pass before someone needs it.
Why in LATAM you cannot sell what you cannot recover
In a company with an office, the sale of equipment starts in a warehouse where the hardware is already located. In a distributed company, the equipment is in someone's home, in a city that may be hundreds of kilometers from the capital, in a country where the company has no physical presence.
Before a sale can even happen, then, an operation must exist: coordinating the retrieval with the person, moving the equipment, consolidating it somewhere, and evaluating it with uniform criteria. This is the part that defines whether the buyback is a real service or just a promise. And it is the part that only becomes visible when something gets complicated: when the equipment is in a city with no coverage, when the person no longer responds, or when moving hardware between two countries involves paperwork that no one anticipated.
This is exactly the same problem faced by hardware offboarding in distributed teams, which is why it is best to solve both things together. At First Plug, we have our own operations in the LATAM countries where we work, and that is what allows the recovery, storage, and evaluation to happen within the same chain, with end-to-end traceability.
When that chain is built with different intermediaries in each leg, the result is not only slower. It means no one takes responsibility for the equipment in between, and the company ends up discovering the problem only when the value has already been lost.
Resale or recycling: what is at stake in each option
When a piece of equipment goes out of circulation, there are two possible paths, and they are not equivalent: putting it back into use or recycling it to recover its materials. Which one is appropriate depends on the actual condition of the equipment. But to understand why the first path carries more weight than the second, one must look at where the environmental impact of a computer is concentrated throughout its entire lifespan.
According to the Apple Product Environmental Report for the 15-inch MacBook Air with M4 chip (512 GB configuration, March 2025), the total footprint of the device is 155 kg of CO₂e. Of that total, 71% corresponds to production: extraction and processing of raw materials, manufacturing, transport, and assembly of parts. The use of the device during its lifespan represents 25%, transport 3%, and end-of-life processing less than 1%.
Read the other way around, that number says something concrete: by the time a computer reaches someone's desk, most of its environmental impact has already occurred. Recycling it is the way to recover materials when the equipment is no longer usable, even if it does not recoup that initial investment. In contrast, if the equipment is still working well, putting it in the hands of another user prevents one more computer from being manufactured.
Defining which of the two paths applies to each device is part of the work, and it is the first thing we do together with the company that decides to enter its hardware into the program: assessing device by device whether it still has a useful life ahead or if it is time to give it a responsible closure.
How First Plug's BuyBack Works
The BuyBack program takes equipment leaving operation and turns it into recovered value. The process has three steps: the equipment is evaluated and an offer is made; the company accepts and receives the money or gets store credit; and the equipment is refurbished, sold, or safely recycled.
The practical difference lies in that second option. When the recovered value returns as credit, it stops being a loose income and goes towards financing the renewal: what goes out finances what comes in, within the same operation and with a single partner. Recovery, evaluation, erasure, sale, and the new purchase do not go through five different suppliers. And the entire movement is recorded on the platform, along with the rest of the inventory.
A real case
Recargapay had a batch of equipment that it was no longer using. Through the BuyBack program, that idle inventory was transformed into reusable credits, and that credit allowed them to acquire new computers covering more than 90% of the total cost.
It is the complete mechanism in a single movement: equipment that was unused and losing value went on to finance the renewal of the fleet, instead of waiting for a decision that no one ended up making.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is it advisable to evaluate the sale of equipment that is no longer in use?
When one of the four triggers occurs: fleet renewal, an offboarding without near reassignment, a change in equipment standards, or an office closure. There is no fixed age that serves as a rule. What defines the moment is not the age of the equipment, but rather that it has ceased to have a clear destination within the company.
What determines how much used equipment is worth?
It depends on several combining variables: the model and its age, the configuration, the general condition of the equipment, and the country where it is located, because the market does not behave the same way throughout the region. There is no standard table that works for all cases, and that is why the valuation is done equipment by equipment or by lot.
What happens to the data that was on the equipment?
Data wiping is performed before the equipment is destined for resale or refurbishment. It is a mandatory preliminary step of the process, not something left in the hands of the final buyer. If the company needs documentary proof of the deletion —for audit purposes or internal policy— it is documented.
Do you get paid in cash or credit?
Both options exist. The company can receive the money or take store credit to apply toward new purchases. The second alternative is the one that usually makes the most sense when the sale is part of a fleet renewal, because the recovered value directly goes to finance the replacing equipment.
How does it work if the equipment is in multiple countries?
That is precisely the operational part of the process. Before any valuation, the equipment must be removed from where it is, consolidated, and evaluated with a uniform criterion. Having our own operations in LATAM is what allows us to carry out that journey with traceability, instead of depending on a different intermediary for each leg.
The calendar defines how much is recovered
Buyback is not a year-end decision. It is a calendar decision, and the calendar is marked by the value curve of the equipment, not the moment when someone remembers that there are computers stored away.
The companies that recover the most value are not the ones that negotiate better. They are the ones that have defined what happens to a piece of equipment when it is no longer assigned, and within what timeframe. That single criterion (a maximum period between when the equipment is freed and when its destination is decided) changes the outcome more than any other variable in the process.
If right now there is equipment in your company waiting for a decision that no one has made, that is the starting point. You can evaluate the BuyBack here.
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