Tracking and Managing Equipment & Tools

Benefits

Ventipix Asset & Inventory Manager platform enables organizations to efficiently track tools and equipment from the time they are issued until they are returned. 

The platform makes it easy to streamline an organization’s procedures and account for equipment and tools that get transferred between various job sites or between employees or contractors. 

With the Ventipix Asset & Inventory Manager platform, you will get to know where tools and equipment are at any time, discover lost or unused equipment, manage equipment that needs maintenance, and increase accountability.

Getting Started

What you will need

Barcodes or NFC tags

If your equipment has existing barcodes, as long as they are unique for each piece of equipment, you can use them to identify the assets.

If you don’t have any barcodes or NFC tags, you can generate and print barcodes, or program the NFC tags.

Note:

• if you plan to scan barcodes with our iOS or Android app, be sure that they are in a supported format.
• with NFC tags, you can either use its serial ID or program it with your unique values.

The Smartphone App

Download the iOS or Android app that will help you to scan barcodes, QR codes, or NFC tags. In addition, you will also be able to fill in and submit data about the asset being scanned.

You will need to create user accounts for those who should use the smartphone app, and also grant permissions to relevant sections or features of the app.

Note – although the smartphone app is recommended, you can use a webcam or Bluetooth/USB scanners to scan barcodes.

Using the asset management features

Asset Tagging

The first step is to let the platform know what the equipment and tools are. Details can include attributes such as the equipment’s name, brand, purchase date, location, cost, images, etc. These attributes are customizable, so you can capture any attribute that you want.

There are several ways to add your equipment’s records to the platform. They include form filling from either the web browser or the smartphone app, CSV import, and automation from Zapier or Microsoft Power Automate.

The quickest way to get started is by importing the equipment records from a CSV spreadsheet.

Asset Checkout

Once you have tagged the equipment, you can then check them out to custodians and capture relevant data when doing so. 

These captured details can be viewed on the Asset Checkout page.

If the usage demand is higher for some of the equipment, you can use the asset reservation feature to schedule their usage.

You can optionally enable checkout receipts emails to be issued to custodians, or other stakeholders, whenever a checkout is done. The receipts include a list of items that the stakeholder is responsible for.

If you need to capture the custodians’ details, there are several custom field options available for doing so, e.g basic dropdowns. For a large set of custodians, you can use autocomplete dropdowns. If badges are available, you can use the CSV search feature which supports barcode/NFC tag scanning.

Asset Reservation

You can specify what assets are unavailable on a specific day and time.

Reserved assets cannot be checked out.

Asset Check-in

When equipment is returned, simply check them in for the platform to update their status.

You can set up email reminders to remind custodians of equipment that is due for return or overdue.

Asset Maintainance

If equipment needs maintenance services, details such as notes on what’s broken, supporting images, etc, can be captured.

These details can be viewed on the Asset Maintenance page.

Asset Auditing

With the asset auditing feature, you can account for all the equipment that is present and in active use.

What next?

As you track the movement and usage of the equipment, the Tagged Assets section of the platform will show a current up-to-date overview of all the equipment’s statuses.

You can change how the data gets formatted and presented on the table or what gets displayed on it, group alike records, search for records, export them, format them, change the behavior of some functionalities, set up various notifications, sync with other platforms e.g. Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel, and generate custom reports.

If you’re part of a team, you can add other team members as sub-users and assign them permission to access certain features.