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Fixed Asset Tracking Best Practices

FreakBoy

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FreakBoy
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Aug 14, 2001
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It's been a while since I've posted, mostly because I lurk in other areas of the forum to pick up information. Considering the vast depth of knowledge I've seen expressed on this forum I figured that it would worth my time in asking here for help.


I am the IT Director for what most people would consider a start-up company. We're past the point where we should have a fixed asset tracking system in place and I've been pressing the bean counters for some help in getting a system put into place. I've got a few products that I've looked at, but have realized that I really need to address best practices in fixed asset tracking before I can give any type of valid evaluation of a specific product.

Though our product is not not exactly high tech, it is related to high tech, and our offices are full of cutting edge technology. On top of the standard need to track depreciation of printers and other big ticket items, we need to keep track of mice, keyboards, land-line phones, cell phones, file cabinets, product samples, chairs, laptops etc.


What are some experiences and tips that anyone might have for me to get this moving and moving quickly.

As the IT Director, most of my responsibilities have been more in the realm of "doing' than "managing" and now we've gotten to the size where my responsibilities are more in line with the standard definition of a director.


Any help you might offer would be invaluable.


Thanks.


Seth
 
Why do you need to track low value items such as keyboards? The expense incurred in any asset management system is considerable and before you look at any products you should nail down what you want to track - asset types and attributes - and why you want to track those things. What are the costs versus the benefits.
Consider the people also - who will populate, verify and audit. What about change control, exeption reporting etc, etc.
There is a lot of woo around this whole area and vendors are looking to sell crappy products with an "ITAM" or "ITIL" sticker when for many people a few spreadsheets or a simple database is more than enough.
 
The only items in my tracking system are:

1. Items with a serial number.
2. Items under warranty.
3. Consummable items.
4. Items over 100USD in value.

My keyboard has a serial number, is out of warranty, is not a consummable item, and is worth less than 100USD. It is in my tracking system.

If the only reason that an item has for being in the system is its warranty, then the item is removed from the system when the warranty expires (unless it fits one of the other three criteria).

It simply makes sense to keep track of the levels of consummable items, such as copier paper and other office supplies.

As for items over 100USD in value; depreciation is tracked for tax purposes and to provide a "metric" for replacement - 30% off the purchase price works for most items, 50% or even 70% works for the progressively more durable goods. Plus, if the cost of repairs accumulates to over 50% of the replacement cost, we just replace the item and start all over.
 
Our company has over 1000 employees and we don't track mice, cabinets, etc. Why would you? My God, can you imagine having to fill out paperwork every time you have a meeting in your office and you have to run over to the next office to grab a chair? Fill out paperwork when you walk your laptop over to Cindy's office? When two coworkers decide each other's chair is more comfortable for them (say taller/shorter)?

For what it's worth, for us big things are tracked by person - they know I have a laptop and a monitor, they have no idea about mice, power cords, etc. If my mouse dies, or I lose it, I tell IT and they just pull one off the shelf. Naturally, what is on the shelf is tracked, so they know when to reorder, but that is an inventory function - meaning they don't fill out paperwork when I get a new mouse, but they do an inventory once a week or whatever.

We work for the Government, and have plenty of sensitive hardware, and I do mean sensitive. Hardware gets a stick on label. A person is assigned responsibility for the item, and the data goes into a spreadsheet. Sensitive (Government) stuff will largely get tracked by room, but come on, we recognize a mouse for a government furnished laptop is going to move around. So, roger or whoever is responsible for keeping track of that mouse. Once a year or so the Government sends inspectors, and they randomly select items from the spreadsheet and then they go out, find the person responsible, and say "show me the X". Note that this is all legally required, and we could face some stiff penalties if things came up missing, but even here common sense prevails. No one is going to have a heart attack if a generic mouse is misplaced, felony charges would ensue if classified material went missing. Also, we don't have some huge complicated database, a spreadsheet works fine.

Edit: we of course do our own audits - you don't want the US Government to find your mistakes, you want to find them and correct therm.

Also, anything that you will want to fill an insurance claim for you'll want to track. But again, figure out the cost effectiveness of this - do you want the employees mired down to where they are tracking things endlessly just in case the cleaning crew takes a filing cabinet one evening? If you track that at all, just keep an inventory - we bought 20 new ones last year, got rid of 5 bad ones this year, bringing the total to 150 or whatever.

Also, my company put the lock down on pens and stuff - they used to be available for the taking in cabinets. Now, there is a window I have to go to, and it is only open a few hours a day. Guess what I do when my pen dies? Get in the car and drive to Staples and buy my own. At my pay rate, this is not cost effective, but the pen budget is smaller!

(n.b. this is all past tense - I now work from home)
 
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You make a good point. For our general users keyboards wouldn't make sense, but we do have users who are given privileges and provided with hardware that goes into the pricey side of things (for example our desisgners' tablets and accompanying gear... or the CEO's $200 keyboard).

For other things that are of lower cost it becomes a need to track where they are. We have quite a few inexpensive external hard drives that change hands on a regular basis with important intellectual property and we need to be able to keep track of these things.

What software do you use? And are there things (consumables aside) that you just won't track that some others might?
 
As others have already said, don't track too much. Tracking an asset costs money. Define precisely what you will and will not track. Often this is anything over a certain dollar amount so as to justify the overhead. You should also decide what information you want to record. My company tracks the following per-asset:

  • Identifying data (make, model, serial-number)
  • Legal owner (we are often in possession of other people's things)
  • Responsible party (with history)
  • Physical location (with history)
  • Maintenance schedule, instructions, and history
  • Event journal (for recording quirks and other exceptional conditions)
 
My CEO has requested that things like our cabinets and chairs be inventoried due to the fact that we lose visibility on their financial existence as soon as they enter the door. The bulk of our chairs are Aeron chairs. Laptops are something that are a definite for us. I do have specific levels of tech that I provide to specific levels of employees and these things we.

I guess we really need to sit down and categorize the items that are worth tracking as "Fixed Assets" but I know our accountant was really upset with out company's handling of it for the 2008 year.
 
FreakBoy: how big is the company and how much work is projected to go into finding (or making) a system?

I'm asking because if the company is in the SMB range, you might just want to look at SpiceWorks to start off and see if that handles some of your needs. It does way more than fixed asset tracking, but its ability to scan the network and allow you to add stuff manually helps to shave off time for creating a fixed asset report (which is customizable to how much you want to make available to other departments). It's not perfect, but it can be handy in a pinch.
 
Fnord said:
Plus, if the cost of repairs accumulates to over 50% of the replacement cost, we just replace the item and start all over.
Click to expand...
You just blew my mind. :eye-poppi Imagine -- a company that actually understands that sometimes it costs less to just replace an item than to keep repairing the same old junk. I've worked for too many companies where the people who made purchasing decisions were so fixated on the large out-of-pocket cost for new equipment that they couldn't see that they were being nickeled and dimed to death by repairs. :oldroll:
 
We started off using a spreadsheet, but then it grew bigger and we split it up. Eventually we had about dozen different spreadsheets and different groups started modifying the layout to the point that it was becoming impossible to roll it all up into coherent company-side summaries. We finally got it imported into Kaizen Software's Asset Manager - a Fixed Asset Register which allows everyone to update a shared database. Centralizing the data repository took some work but has made our asset tracking and annual audits much easier and faster with a lot less frustration.
 
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