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Version: Next (nightly)

Assets

Assets are the individual things you own and track one at a time: a computer, a car, a camera, a power tool. Each one is its own record with its own history.

Assets vs. Inventory​

The difference from Inventory is fungibility.

  • Inventory is fungible stock. A bin of 200 screws is just a quantity, and you don't care which screw is which. You track how many you have.
  • Assets are unique. Your laptop and your car aren't interchangeable with another one. Each is a specific thing with its own serial number, condition, and history, and you track them one by one, not as a count.
  • Rule of thumb: if you'd say "I have 200 of these," it's inventory. If you'd say "this one," it's an asset. And if it runs jobs on its own, like a printer or a laser, that's a machine.

What an asset carries​

  • The one-of-a-kind fields ship with it: manufacturer, model, type, a state, the serial number, when you bought it, when the warranty runs out, and when it was last serviced.
  • Warranty and service dates are real dates, so they surface in Up next and on the calendar without any wiring.
  • The service history itself lives in Maintenance.
  • Like anything else, an asset takes custom fields, photos, a location, a QR label, and a Contents panel, so a toolbox asset can list the tools inside it.

Lending things out​

Add a person field (the Member type) called "Checked out to" and every asset gains an assignable holder, filterable like any field, so "what does Sam have" is a saved view.

There is deliberately no built-in checkout system. This is something more general. The tool library example builds a whole lending desk from exactly this.

Tracking an asset​

  • Add one by scanning, often the quickest way: the door-jamb barcode of a car or the serial label of a laptop both resolve to a filled-in record.
  • An asset with a photo opens in a wide, image-left detail: the picture large on one side, its fields in a grid beside it, stacking to a single column on a phone.
  • The subtitle under the title follows any fields you've hidden, so a trimmed-down record stays trimmed.