QR Labels in Bulk

Tagging one asset at a time is fine for a handful. For a site with a thousand assets you want to select them all, generate every missing QR code in one go, and print the labels as a sheet you can guillotine and stick. That is what this page covers.

Generating QR Codes for Many Assets

1. 1

   Go to Assets

   Open the Assets list in AssetBase.

2. 2

   Select assets

   Tick the assets you want. Use the header checkbox to take the whole page.

3. 3

   Select all matching assets

   If you want everything, tick the header checkbox and then choose Select all N matching assets — this follows your current search and filter, so you can tag "everything at Lekki Yard B" without ticking rows one by one.

4. 4

   Click QR codes

   Open the bulk QR generation dialog from the toolbar.

The dialog first tells you what it found:

• Need a QR — Assets in your selection with no QR code yet
• Already have one — Assets that already carry a QR

Click Generate and only the assets in the first column are touched. Assets that already have a QR are skipped, so running this repeatedly is safe — it never produces a second code for the same asset.

How AssetBase knows an asset "has" a QR

When a QR is generated it is stored on the asset as an attachment tagged QR-tag. That attachment is the record. You can see it on the asset's Attachments panel, and re-download or reprint it at any time.

If an asset has no scannable code at all, AssetBase assigns it one (AB- plus eight characters) and saves it to the asset, so the printed label actually resolves when scanned. An asset already carrying an asset code, barcode, or serial keeps it.

Large selections

Selecting a few hundred assets generates immediately. Selecting thousands hands the work to a background job and shows a progress bar — you can keep working, and the count climbs as codes are minted. A 20,000-asset run does not block the system.

Printing the Label Sheet

In the same dialog, step 2 prints the sheet: a multi-column grid of labels, one per selected asset, laid out by your label template.

• Small runs open straight into the print dialog.
• Large runs render in the background and arrive as downloadable parts — each part is a separate PDF of manageable size. Parts become downloadable as soon as each one is ready, so you can start printing before the whole run finishes, and Download all parts (.zip) collects them at the end.

Printing is independent of generating. You can reprint a sheet for assets that were tagged months ago — useful when labels get damaged or a yard is re-organised.

Designing Your Label

Label designer in the left-hand menu controls how every label looks.

Branding

What prints on each label

Choose which register fields appear and drag them into order. The first field is printed as the headline. Available fields include asset name, asset code, serial number, category, manufacturer, model, location, site, RFID EPC and condition.

Custom fields work too. Type a custom field key (e.g. cost_center) and add it — the label then prints that asset's value for it. This is how an ERP attribute reaches the physical label.

Sheet and label size

Pick a stock from the preset list (Avery L7160, L7161, L7163, and compact/large options) or set the geometry yourself: columns across, rows down, label width and height in millimetres, QR size, and page margin. The panel tells you how many labels fit per page and roughly how many pages 1,000 assets will need.

Cut guides draw a light outline around each label — leave them on for plain paper, turn them off when printing onto die-cut label stock.

Use Preview to render a real sheet of your actual assets. A label that looks right on screen and wrong at 63.5 × 25.4 mm is worse than no preview at all.

Which Tag Should I Use?

Both can co-exist on the same asset and in the same register. See AB-020 RFID Tagging and Capture for the RFID side.

• AB-010 — The Asset Register
• AB-020 — RFID Tagging & Capture
• AB-024 — Capturing Condition at Scan
• AB-014 — Images & Attachments