Every inventory system, from a clipboard to a six-figure platform, rests on the same small thing: being able to point at an object and say which row it is. Get the labelling right and everything downstream is easy. Get it wrong and you spend the next three years typing serial numbers.
This is what to buy, how to number things, and how to make scanning work without any special hardware.
The tag is not the serial number
These are two different fields and conflating them causes most of the mess.
- The serial number is the manufacturer’s. It is what an insurer, a police report and a warranty claim need. It is long, inconsistent between makers, and nobody reads it aloud correctly.
- The asset tag is yours. It is short, sequential, and printed on a label you stick on. It is what people actually use.
Record both. Search by the tag, claim by the serial.
Numbering: keep it dumb
The temptation is to encode meaning into the tag — department, purchase year, category. Resist it. The moment a laptop moves from Finance to Sales, or a mic moves from worship to youth, a “smart” tag becomes a lie you cannot peel off.
Use a short prefix for the broad type and a sequence that never restarts:
| Good | Why |
|---|---|
LT-0042, MON-0117 | Type plus a running number. Type rarely changes; everything else does. |
000238 | Even simpler. Perfectly fine, and impossible to contradict. |
| Avoid | Why |
|---|---|
FIN-LAPTOP-2023-07 | Encodes three things that all change, and two devices bought the same month collide. |
| Restarting at 1 each year | You now have two LT-0001s and a
permanently ambiguous log. |
Leading zeros are worth the trouble: they keep tags the same length, which makes them sort correctly and makes a mistyped one obvious.
Labels: what actually survives
- Paper labels from an office printer are free and last about six months on anything that gets handled. Fine for trialling a numbering scheme; not fine for a tool.
- Polyester or vinyl labels are the normal answer. They survive cleaning, handling and a few years of sun. A sheet of pre-printed sequential labels is cheap.
- Tamper-evident labels tear into pieces if peeled. Worth it for laptops that leave the building, pointless for a stapler.
- Metal or foil labels for tools, plant and anything that lives in a van or gets degreased.
- Engraving or a paint pen for the roughest environments. Not scannable, but it never falls off.
Put the label where a person will look without turning the item over — the top of a laptop lid is wrong, the palm rest or the base near the front edge is right — and put a second one inside the case for anything that travels.
Barcode or QR?
Code 128 is the sensible default for a linear barcode: it handles letters and numbers, it is compact, and every scanner made in the last thirty years reads it. QR codes hold more, survive being scuffed better because of their error correction, and can be read at odd angles — useful when the label is on the underside of something heavy.
For most people the honest answer is that it does not matter much. Pick one, use it everywhere, and make sure whatever reads it can read that format.
Two ways to scan, and neither needs a system
A USB scanner, about $25
This is the underrated one. A keyboard-wedge scanner does exactly one thing: it types. Plug it into a laptop, click into any field — a spreadsheet cell, a search box, a form — pull the trigger, and the tag appears as if you had typed it, followed by Enter. There is no driver, no integration and no configuration. It works with software that has never heard of barcodes.
The camera you already have
Modern browsers on Android and on Windows and Mac laptops can read barcodes and QR codes directly through the camera, with no app installed. That makes a phone or a laptop a scanner for free.
The gap worth knowing about: Safari does not support this, so it does not work on an iPhone or iPad. If your team is on iPhones, a $25 USB scanner on the one machine that keeps the file is the reliable path.
The workflow that saves the most time
Scanning one item to look it up is mildly useful. The thing that actually changes an afternoon is a sticky scan mode: the scanner stays open and each scan pulls up the next item in turn. A stock-take becomes one walk round the room rather than a hundred separate lookups, and it is the difference between doing an audit annually and doing it when you feel like it.
Label everything in one sitting. Partial labelling is worse than none, because now nobody knows whether an unlabelled item is untracked or just missed. Set aside an afternoon, work through the store room, and finish.
A reasonable first afternoon
- Pick a numbering scheme and write it down in one line.
- Order a roll of sequential polyester labels, or print a sheet if you are trialling.
- Walk the store room labelling everything, recording tag, item, make, model and serial as you go.
- Photograph anything valuable while you are there — insurers ask.
- Only then worry about the software.
Somewhere to put it all
Our trackers are one Excel file with a dashboard on top. They read barcodes and QR codes from a USB scanner or a camera, keep a sticky scan mode for stock-takes, and store a photo per item inside the workbook itself. No account, no server, no monthly fee.
Three versions, same tool, $79 once each — IT assets, tools and equipment for crews, and church A/V. Every one has a live demo you can click through without buying anything.