Asset Management

Do you have recommendations for management of items (assets) for a very small company consisting of about 4 individuals? The equipment to be tracked is video equipment that will be used to produce short videos and podcasts for clients and consists of perhaps 50 items. We have so far, two cameras, a couple of lenses, some batteries, various cables, chargers, memory cards, SS Drives for video data, tripods, mics, lighting items, one monitor.

I just want to instill some accountability for the various items so we all know what is where, who bought what items, what items are paired together (memory plus camera plus lens, for instance).

A spreadsheet is probably sufficient on google docs. But I imagine this is a common need and donā€™t really to reinvent something that might be out there as a free app or perhaps really cheap software. Unfortunately, mostly what I find when I search is software for big companies with thousands of assets. I need something really simple.

I thought DMS might be using something for their assets.

BTW, products out there seem to focus on software asset mgmt. Iā€™m only concerned about physical hardware tracking.

Iā€™ve heard ā€œgood thingsā€ about WASP, for a ā€œcheapo solutionā€. They hock barcode scanners, but they seem to work OK, and they offer asset tracking softwares to make you think their product is more usefulā€¦

If you search for ā€œlifetime tracking of several hard assets small studioā€ and/or ā€œfreeware for tracking physical assetsā€ youā€™ll find lists of dozens of such 'wares. I like the look of this ad for ā€œasset pandaā€.

As for 'wares recommendation, Iā€™ve got nothing. Weā€™ve always just used a spreadsheet and suffered with the shortcomings.
[rant on] I will offer, though, that EVERY asset COMES WITH a built-in unique identification number (usually called a Serial Number, but not always, see Dellā€™s Service Tag) so there is NO NEED to re-invent unique equipment IDs. Yet another pitfall every. single. time. is that someone is unhappy with tracking SN and wants to assign some other ā€œasset numberā€ā€¦ [/rant]

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Thanks for the reply. Interesting. I keep coming up with ā€œAsset Pandaā€ and I hate to be cheap because I donā€™t mind paying for a good app or service but this is a really simple startup pseudo business. However, the panda app really does a lot of cool stuff. Like . . . it tracks usage of equipment to provide historical data. Tracks items in need of repair, requests for new equipment, requests for booking of equipment for future gigs - some really nice-to-have but possibly superfluous stuff.

Iā€™m always concerned about price when I click ā€œpricesā€ and I see

08 AM

How about DMS? Do we use anything?

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dms as a whole? not that Iā€™m aware of yet but for the most part its usually up to each individual committee chair to keep track of thier assets.

Personally I prefer https://snipeitapp.com, its free, open source, quick to deploy via docker, and well documented.

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Thanks, Denzuko. I did peek at that. I started to try the ā€˜freeā€™ version. It is a download that runs on Linux Ubuntu and I do not have a virtual of that machine currently running.
But indeed there is a ā€˜freeā€™ version of snipeitapp.

The basic hosted version is $40 per mo and it looks like snipeit is marketed for IT assets but perhaps is does hard assets as well. Need to update my Parallels (itā€™s gotten way too old) and install a Linux machine at some point.

seems like something like Hiltiā€™s OnTrack product would be a good fit (even tracks certifications), but itā€™s expensive for what it is. I do have some connections there that might be willing to give a discount if we like it. Base is around $400 a month.

Itā€™s not a perfect fit, but I work for a company that makes asset tracking and rental software (that has what/when, availability, etc) I could likely get it for cheap for the space.

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I work with fixed assets. I have used Sage FAS which was amazing when I used it 10 years ago and fixed asset modules that were part of the accounting software. For simple straight line depreciation calculations I prefer to just use a spreadsheet like Excel - Google Sheets would probably work just fine. If I need to calculate tax depreciation, tax software can generally handle that. If I needed to track assets with multiple cost or something crazy then Iā€™d look at FAS again. I generally like to keep fixed assets simple because usually this is a simple calculation and software is generally overkill that takes up more of my time than using a spreadsheet.

spreadsheet like Excel - Google Sheets

:roll_eyes: oh godsā€¦ got a big BOHF war story there that Iā€™m still under NDA over. Lets just say at lease its google sheets but why the 'ell would anyone torment themselves with that?

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Just for completeness Iā€™ll link to a few others:

Honestly, the topic of Asset Management is a bit different between organizations and usually is big bucks for contractors, or done by M$ office cowboys in access/excelā€¦

At this topics core it depends on what your trying to track, why your tracking it, how much relational tracking you need, and whom your reporting all this to. Most asset management tools found online are IT based because obvious reasons stated above and shown in this thread as a whole.

i know that home depot sells equipment trackers

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee-ONE-KEY-TICK-Tool-and-Equipment-Tracker-4-Pack-48-21-2004/300859184

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Evanfort - Yikes! $400 per mo!

I could prob do with a spreadsheet or write a simple DB app. Just wondering. Like I said the panda app looks good but donā€™t know the price and they have not returned my ā€˜request for quoteā€™. Iā€™d prob pay $10 per mo to have a cloud based app.

I do have some things Iā€™d love to track with GPS but in this case, none of the items need tracking that way.

Just have about 50 items valued around $5K and 3 people who will share use of the equipment. No software to track, I just mainly want people to be accountable.

Those Milwaukee blue tooth trackers are pretty cool. Much like the ā€˜Tileā€™, I presume.

Just have about 50 items valued around $5K and 3 people who will share use of the equipment. No software to track, I just mainly want people to be accountable.

Google Sheets and Google Forms is the best solution then.

Tutorial on how: Google Forms to Google Sheets: Automatically update inventory | Zapier

Sample inventory sheet with checkout features: Inventory Example - Very Basic - Google Sheets

And Iā€™m available for hire to set up one just for your needs.

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Thanks . . . Zapier ā†’ good to know about!

And sample inventory work flow pretty good.

I sat down to do a basic spreadsheet for our things and realized . . .
Iā€™m gonna need a relational database of some sort. The spreadsheet is a flat file sort of thing although one could do lookup tables and such. But for instance - I may have multiple instances of a camera battery pack, which may be linked to a specific supplier and be authorized for use by certain people (although this is going way beyond my current needs).

I may look at a DB program like Access to keep it simple.

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BTW, I realize there may be a few products like this but I came across this:

https://airtable.com/

Itā€™s basically a database app that you use in spreadsheet form and it handles table relationships pretty well. I think it may do what I want. I played with it for about an hour. Does one to many and many to many (but hides the details table) relationships pretty well and offers pretty good ā€˜formsā€™ and data display and search options.

I used a product called zoho in the past but I think that is mainly for CRM these days.

If I really think it will work, denzuko, I may put you to work on it.

Cheers,

DJ

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just PM you my phone number.