Useful information to help organizations keep control of managing and tracking their Assets
Welcome to asset-tracking.org - Useful Asset Tracking information and resources
Tracking and managing your assets has always been a fundamental task in effectively managing an organization, no matter what it's size. Incredibly the effective management of an organisations assets is still overlooked by many companies and this site aims to provide some useful information on where to get started with Asset Tracking.
Asset
Tracking
An overview of Tracking
Assets within the Organisation
In order for a business to be successful it must be able to track, manage and maintain it's assets. Many companies have literally thousands of assets within the organisation which need tracking. If the assets are not tracked correctly then massive financial losses can occur due to the poor asset management. By implementing a suitable asset tracking system within the organisation, assets can be tracked so that for example an employee knows where a particular asset is located, when that asset needs a maintenance check, how old the asset is and it's depreciation in value, how much the asset is costing to maintain etc
Asset Tracking occurs everyday in many different environments, an asset may be a person, photocopier, air conditioning unit or one of many other physical things within the organisation. A popular way of managing and tracking assets is to use a bar coding system. Unique bar codes such as those you see in supermarkets are placed directly onto every single asset within the organisation. The assets can then be scanned and logged automatically into an Asset Management Software System. Although not all Asset Management systems have a barcoding interface, many software systems still allow assets to be entered into the system and tracked on a daily basis.
Why use software to manage Assets ?Why use software to manage anything? simple. Software saves us time and money which are two things an organisation must manage properly in order to be successful. Computer software is now a major part of most people working day either accessing their email, writing a report or surfing for information on the internet. Many organisations still track their organisations assets with spreadsheets and custom databases. This is fine, but many are not aware of the Asset Tracking systems available to them on the market which can be suprisingly inexpensive and also save a huge amount of time and money. Whilst many large organisations already will use some kind of Asset Tracking software, many smaller organisations are unaware of the benefits they could get from a suitable asset tracking software system. View more information on technology behind Asset Tracking with Asset Tracking Software |
A significant amount of time and energy can go into tracking our fixed assets, such as; desks, computers, chairs and other items which we purchase every year. While Asset Management or Asset Tracking is primarily an accounting procedure, we still have to be able to find the various assets and account for them during audits, or at the very least, show that we are able to on a moments notice. If we can't, then the drudgery really starts and valuable time is locked up in physical inventories.
Most small businesses start out with a spread sheet of some type, listing out the four desks, three computers and a printer. Larger businesses have a bit more to keep track of, not only where and what, but when and how much have they lost from depreciation. Tracking the depreciation value of fixed assets can glean a significant amount of savings on the tax dollar if the tracking system meets the standards acceptable for an audit (GAAP or Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). Unfortunately, most home grown systems don't.
Taxes are not the only reason for keeping track of fixed and depreciable assets. Government grants, for example often require accurate declarations of company asset values. Bringing a company public requires such reports and most insurance claims go much smoother if you have this information on hand. Might as well face it, you need it, and it has to be done right.
The goals for most asset tracking are fairly straight forward. We want to know where anything costing more than $200.00 is at any given time. Major equipment should be tagged with barcode or RFID tags if they are valuable enough. We will talk about both of those types of tags on another page.
The inventory needs to be kept up to date. There are several types of software packages on the market for doing this task, and each has various features which make the job easier. We'll talk about a few of these, and the features you want to look for on another page as well.
Periodic physical inventories need to be done to verify the information in the software database systems. Records of these inventories and the outcomes should be recorded and available on request. These often remove the necessity for a full physical audit, saving many hours in the future.
Some type of communication system needs to be in place for the transfer of physical assets from one place to another. For example, you have someone quit their job in one office, but hired a new person in another office, who now requires a desk, chair and computer. Instead of buying all new stuff, and having her do nothing for few days while it is being approved, you transfer all the items from one office to the other. A system needs to be in place that shows this happened in the Asset Tracking inventory.
Asset Management is a set of systems and framework which provides a measure of organizational performance and ties it to internal short term and long term planning.
On this website you will find information on the various technologies
available to make this happen, and some descriptions of the types of
software on the market designed to fulfill the needs of large and small
business.
©2005 Asset-Tracking.org | Contact Us