The Assets of any company are important not just from the perspective of the balance sheet but also from the long-term perspective. Asset tags are forms of labels used to identify as well as track organizational assets. They also help with inventory management and also maintenance.
These Asset tags come in various types and with time the technology involved as well as their types have also changed.
What are the different types of Assets?
Depending on their physical characteristics, they are broadly classified as:
Movable Assets
Any physical asset which can be moved around or easily relocated is generally classified as a Movable Asset. Examples of movable assets are furniture, laptops, vehicles, etc.
Fixed Assets
These assets remain fixed at their location throughout their useful life. Typically they are physical assets also mostly infrastructure assets examples being buildings, machines, equipment, etc.
What are Asset Tags?
These typically are labels or some kind of identifier to uniquely identify the specific asset. In its simplest form, it may be a sticker with a unique serial number or it could be a bar code. This identifier will help retrieve details about the asset from a centralized system. Details like batch number, manufacturing date, cost price, purchase order, and other relevant information would be stored about the asset.
Earlier asset tags were made with aluminum or polyester and usually, they would have some information regarding assets on the tag. Now, this has changed into a barcode which when scanned would help view the information in a jiffy.
Importance of Asset Tagging
“You can’t manage what you can’t measure”
Asset management systems or processes are important and asset tagging is an essential step towards making asset management feasible. Also, multiple aspects like asset inventory control, maintenance management, purchases in many ways take helpful cues from the asset management.
Asset tagging enables businesses to keep a tab on the asset inventory by actively tracking and managing it. Taking decisions on whether it is worth it to absorb the maintenance cost or make go ahead and replace with a new one becomes easier.
Also, once the assets are tagged it becomes easier to keep doing a physical audit and ensure that the assets are physically present and easily locatable. This helps ensure that they are easily found when needed to be used. This also helps act as a deterrent against their getting lost or stolen.
There are many types of asset tags and have matured over time. The traditional asset tags were passive and more of asset labels to identify them and tag them as a property of the company. The modern tags are active tags and are based on technology with information stored such that it can be electronically retrieved from them.
It is also important for the organization to know about the condition of the assets. It also helps in keeping track of the value of assets and ensuring the depreciation of these assets is reflected correctly in the balance sheet.
Additionally one can track things like purchase history, maintenance history with a consistent asset management system.
Benefits of Asset Tags
The asset when properly tagged can help businesses in multiple ways:
Equipment Tracking:
Many times there are types of equipment that are rented from vendors and hence tracking them is very essential to ensure that they are utilized properly and they also are billed correctly. Tagging the equipment and ensuring that they are tracked and logged is critical.
Inventory Control:
Tagging the fixed goods ensures that there is very good inventory control in terms of which warehouse they are located and the count by ensuring there is a track of what checks in and out of the warehouse.
MRO Information:
Every asset tagged will have information on its useful life, last maintenance done. This would help the maintenance department decide when to include a particular asset for a routine check as well as will help management decide upon the repairs or overhaul needed.
Avoid Loss
Ensuring that the assets are tracked regularly will ensure that they don’t get lost and are utilized fully. Also, even the guards can verify if any equipment is tagged and if they are can check for authorizations using the tags to ensure there is no theft.
Conclusion
The use of asset labels is definitely invaluable when it comes to asset management practices. Today there are better and more advanced options like the Genio tags that come as part of the Asset Tracking Software provided by Quicsolv. These solutions provide value-added and easy-to-implement solutions that can make things easier at the ground level.
