Asset tag
An asset tag is a durable label fixed to a piece of equipment carrying a unique identifier, so the physical item can be matched to its record.
An asset tag is a durable label fixed to a piece of equipment carrying a unique identifier, so the physical item can be matched to its record.
← Equipment management glossary
Also called: asset label, asset tagging.
Paper labels are fine on office equipment that lives indoors and gets handled gently. Everything else needs more: polyester or vinyl for workshops, laminated or anodised metal for outdoor plant and anything subject to heat, solvents or pressure washing.
Tamper-evident tags, which destroy themselves on removal, are worth the premium on high-theft-risk items. So is a second, hidden tag on genuinely valuable equipment — recovery is much easier when a thief has only found one label.
Three rules. Somewhere visible without dismantling anything, because a tag that requires disassembly will not be scanned during a count. Somewhere flat, since curved and textured surfaces defeat both adhesive and scanners. And somewhere out of the grip path, because the spot people naturally hold is the spot the label wears off.
Apply the same placement convention across each equipment type. Counters who know where to look move several times faster than counters who have to search.
The temptation is to encode meaning — department, category, purchase year. It reliably backfires: departments reorganise, categories get renamed, and equipment moves. You end up with tags that assert things which are no longer true, and staff who trust the tag over the record.
Use a plain sequential number and keep the meaning in the database, where it can change. The tag's only job is to be unique and readable.
Untagged equipment cannot be counted reliably, cannot be checked out by scan, and cannot be proven to belong to you when it turns up somewhere else.
Itefy assigns each item a unique ID and generates QR label sheets by label brand and type, so you print to the stock you already buy. Read more.
Short, sequential and meaningless. Encoding department or category into the number guarantees that the tag will eventually contradict the record, because equipment moves and organisations reorganise.
Usually yes. It deters casual theft, helps genuine returns of lost equipment, and costs nothing extra to print. Add a contact address or phone number for items that travel.
Barcode tracking uses printed machine-readable codes on physical items so that scanning a label, rather than typing an identifier, records what happened to which item.
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