How Asset Tracking Works

Capture is your choice. AssetBase runs on UHF RFID, on QR + phone camera, or on both at once — neither is a requirement. The workflow below is the same either way; the RFID/QR trade-off is covered at the end.

What is a physical asset?

A physical asset is a tangible item your organisation owns or controls, that holds value beyond a single use, and that someone must be accountable for. If it can go missing and that loss matters — financially, operationally, or to an auditor — it is an asset.

• It physically exists, occupies a place, and can be pointed at during a count.
• Owned, leased, or held by the organisation — it sits on your books or your register.
• Used repeatedly over time rather than consumed once. It typically depreciates.
• It has — or should have — a custodian, a location, and a cost centre.

Typically assets: IT equipment (laptops, monitors, projectors, servers) · plant & site equipment (handling gear, generators, pumps) · vehicles, trailers, powered site equipment · furniture, fixtures & office equipment · tools, instruments & returnable containers.

Typically not assets: consumables used up in one go (paper, fuel, spares) · software licences and other intangibles · stock held for sale (that's inventory) · items below your capitalisation threshold · anything with no custodian and no material value.

Two identifiers per asset — and where the data lives

Every asset carries two identifiers. Keeping them separate is what makes the tag durable and the audit accurate.

Everything else — custodian, location, cost centre, and every custom field — lives in the register (the asset's record). The tag carries the identifiers; the register carries the meaning.

Five steps, tag to audit

1. 1

   Import the baseline

   Load your ERP/asset list as CSV, once. It seeds the register and is the system-of-record baseline you later audit against. Re-import any time to refresh. (The same file does both — there is no second import step.)

2. 2

   Encode & print the tag

   The printer writes the EPC into the tag and prints the label (asset code, QR, and EPC).

3. 3

   Affix to the asset

   Stick the printed tag onto the physical item.

4. 4

   Open an audit & scan

   Open a named audit, then read each tag into it: RFID handheld (EPC) or phone camera (QR). One pass both registers/confirms the asset and captures it for the audit; unknown tags are flagged to enroll.

5. 5

   Reconcile & report

   Score the audit's scans against the baseline → captured, missing, unexpected, misplaced. You can reconcile the same audit against several baselines; each run is kept, selectable, and exportable on its own.

Scanning without an audit (pure onboarding)

A bare scan never auto-creates a register row. What actually happens:

• Known QR tag → AssetBase recognises it, records a sighting, and refreshes that asset's last-seen time and place.
• Unknown QR code → the lookup returns not found before anything is staged, so no scan row is written — the app opens Populate and you create the asset directly.
• RFID reads are always recorded, whether or not they belong to an audit. A tag AssetBase recognises refreshes that asset's last-seen; a tag it does not recognise stays flagged as unknown until you add it to the register.

So the register is built by import → Populate → enroll, never by a scan silently importing itself.

Encode & print the tag — RFID or QR

You choose the capture method per asset. RFID and QR are both options, and one register holds either. Tag the assets that need bulk reads with RFID; tag the rest with QR.

• RFID: AssetBase mints a unique EPC and sends the label printer one instruction set that both writes the EPC into the chip and prints the face.
• QR: the same label prints on any office printer — no chip, no RFID printer. The QR carries the asset code and is read with a phone camera.
• Either way, the identifier is written back to the asset's register record, so a scan resolves straight to the asset.

The label face is standard — asset name, asset code, serial number, EPC, a QR of the asset code, plus your brand and the install location. You don't design a label per asset.

Affix, then scan to build the register

Affix the tag, then read it — pull the RFID handheld's trigger to pick up the EPC, or point a phone camera at the QR to pick up the asset code. Either read enters the same flow.

Every read is resolved. AssetBase matches each read against the register — recognised → a sighting is logged; unrecognised → staged and later flagged unexpected at reconcile. Anything genuinely new is enrolled with Populate, pre-filled from the record.

Repeat across the estate. Every scan is recorded first and applied to the register afterwards, so a bad or duplicate read can never quietly corrupt your asset list.

Reconcile against the baseline → compliance report

Using the baseline imported in step 1, choose what to reconcile on before running (see Audits & Compliance) — AssetBase compares it against what was actually scanned into the audit and produces the differential: captured (matched), missing, unexpected, misplaced.

A note on coverage

No single RFID pass is guaranteed to read 100% of tags in a cluttered room — orientation, metal, and body-shadowing all reduce reads. That's why the audit works against an expected set: reconcile hands you the exact missing list, so you re-scan only those. Multiple operators or a second pass into the same session converge to a defensible 100%.

In short: print → affix → scan → reconcile. One register, one source of truth. Your asset code is the audit key; the EPC is the scan key; custodian and every custom field live in the register. The result is a repeatable, same-day compliance audit of every physical asset — and AssetBase stays system-agnostic: any system of record works via CSV.

A lower-cost option — QR + phone

For assets that don't move and are counted periodically, the same AssetBase software runs on QR tags and a phone camera — no RFID printer or reader. Same register, custody, custom fields, audit, and report. You can even mix both on one register.

• AB-010 — The Asset Register
• AB-020 — RFID Tagging & Capture
• AB-022 — QR Labels in Bulk
• AB-030 — Audits & Compliance