How to track, trace and audit your company’s valuable assets with barcoded tags or labels

First of all – what is an asset? Your company’s assets are different from your Inventory items. Assets are physical objects which have a usable lifetime of at least a year, and are utilised frequently by your staff. They include electronic items such as laptops and pc’s, photocopiers and printers, company cars and warehouse vehicles as well as tools and furniture. Because of this they have an innate value which will depreciate over time, and will create maintenance costs. Inventory items on the other hand will be consumed over the normal course of business – such as stock items, stationery and other consumables. 

The core of any business is to make sure that you are running your organisation in the most efficient and productive manner. It can be very difficult for management to access the right data in a large organisation with many staff and lots of equipment; and to see where funds are being wasted or money could be saved. The reports which you can access via asset tracking software are invaluable for this – where are the maintenance costs of a certain piece of equipment outweighing its actual value to the company, which assets are rarely used or where might it be wise to invest in a more efficient item or procure more of a certain piece of equipment to enable your staff to perform better, amongst myriad other applications. Not to mention knowing when assets are going missing! On average, implementing a barcoded system means that asset audits take at least a tenth of the time of a manual count and are far more accurate. You can always run periodic audits of certain locations to avoid a massive effort come year-end. 

There are many things to consider when choosing an asset tracking system. What tags or labels do you need? Do you need highly durable metal or aluminium asset tags or will a simple polyester label be sufficient? Do you want to print your own labels with a barcode printer? What scanner is best for your use and how many do you need? What software will have all the fields you need to run valuable reports? It may seem daunting, but doing your research and getting the best performing system and software for your particular company can save you a massive amount of time and money in the long run. Once you have your system installed, be thorough and diligent about having all assets coming into and leaving their location or stockroom, or assigned to a staff member, being scanned and your data updated. This way you will maintain the integrity of your asset database and reap the full rewards that asset tracking can bring.

Need help or more information? SA Barcodes and our partners can help you find the system which works for your business, and assist with barcode tags or labels, software installation and staff training. Feel free to contact us for more information.