Since all businesses, irrespective of their scale, require physical assets to operate, equipment inventory management is imperative to smooth business operations. Keeping track of your tangible assets from the time you acquire them to their retirement or disposal is a necessity. It may not be your priority, but asset management is non-negotiable when it comes to operational cost and process optimization.

And, it requires a methodical approach. That is where equipment inventory management comes into the picture.

What is Equipment Inventory Management?

Equipment Inventory Management (EIM) refers to the process of supervising the lifecycle of tangible assets from procurement through usage and retirement. It also includes the record keeping of invoices, warranty, allocation charts, and other related documents. EIM is just another type of inventory management that focuses on real-time insights regarding the usage and utility of practical assets.

Businesses across all sectors, including IT, logistics, retail, healthcare, education, and more require EIM.

Seamless EIM has multiple benefits.

Optimal Usage

It can help you make optimal use of your tangible assets. EIM ensures that the physical equipment you need to run the business, whether technical or non-technical, is used to its maximum capacity before being replaced with fresh stock. You can monitor asset performance closely and ensure that the funds you spend on acquiring certain equipment yield an acceptable ROI.

Asset Visibility

Besides optimal asset utilization, Equipment Inventory Management also boosts asset visibility. This is especially important if you run a business with cross-functional teams, multiple internal departments, and pan-regional operations.

You need to know which assets are where, with whom, and for what purpose. That gives you ample leeway to streamline asset allocation.

You can further utilize the EIM updates to replace malfunctioning or outdated assets with better, more relevant solutions. That saves you a whole lot of downtime and, therefore, losses.

Compliance and Regulation

EIM also facilitates greater compliance within the team. Besides helping you stay updated about asset allocation, a foolproof equipment inventory makes it the employee’s prerogative to ensure the equipment is used per best practices.

Careful handling and usage of equipment prolong their lifecycle. Greater compliance breeds greater responsibility.

As you can tell, for today’s tech and asset-reliant businesses, EIM is key to unlocking everyday operational success. It’s also key to minimizing capital expenditure.

Methods of Equipment Inventory Management

You can perform equipment inventory management as you please in the following ways:

Manual Record

You can go for traditional manual methods like maintaining physical accounts of your equipment. Start by making an extensive equipment inventory list and build on it by adding relevant information like general overview, location, acquisition and allocation details, costs, etc.

The manual method is heavily reliant on physical record keeping and is prone to human error. However, for small businesses with limited tangible assets, it is the most cost-effective equipment inventory management method.

If you do opt for manual inventory management, you have to ensure that all the records are stored safely in the same place and can be easily accessed whenever needed. The records must also be stored systematically in files and periodically reviewed for accuracy. It’s tedious but feasible.

This method is good for you if you’re new to equipment stock monitoring and run a small-scale business. You can always upgrade to the other methods of EIM to meet the growing needs of your business.

Excel Spreadsheet

As an upgrade to manual recordkeeping on paper, you could also use a spreadsheet on MS Excel for EIM. Any equipment inventory should always contain the following information:

• The name of the equipment/ a short description of what it can be used for
• Serial number
• Acquisition date
• The location where it is stored/can be accessed from
• The price of purchase
• Manufacturer/ manufacturing details
• Product warranty information, including any certificates/guarantee cards that may be necessary to claim it
• Vendor
• Maintenance log
• User manual or any related guides that may be necessary to utilize the asset
• Who the equipment is currently assigned or has been checked out to
• Status of the equipment
• Any additional notes or comments

Fill in the details and make use of unique identifiers to ensure two pieces of the same category of equipment are not confused with one another. Keep the spreadsheet updated at all times to stay on top of your equipment inventory.

You can easily use Excel’s formulas, filters, and other functions to navigate the inventory. While it’s better than manual physical records, you must perform regular audits to rule out mistakes or outdated information.

Ensure that the Excel sheet you’re using for EIM is stored on the cloud so that it can be easily accessed by anyone involved in updating it. Cloud is great for driving collaborative efforts at scale and expediting the process of updating your inventory management sheet. Plus, you get the benefit of auto backups and sync.

Using Excel is also a very cost-effective method of handling your equipment inventory, although you need to be vigilant about maintaining it.

Equipment Inventory Management Software

The most sophisticated and seamless way of managing your equipment inventory is deploying dedicated software. Software solutions will cost you some, but they provide seamless equipment inventory management that’s fast, effort-efficient, and error-free.

You can run EIM on auto-pilot, perform data analysis, and simplify your asset management when you use a specialized solution for it. The cost justifies the usage!

Apart from dedicated software, you can also opt for QR codes, barcodes, or Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags on all your assets for equipment inventory management.

Take your pick depending on your budget, experience in inventory management, and immediate requirements. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to asset management — take the one that you think will work out the best for you.

Nest Egg Intelligent Inventory Management: One Solution, Multiple Applications

Talking of inventory management software, here’s one that can help you simplify EIM, irrespective of the method you choose.

Nest Eggs’s comprehensive Intelligent Inventory Management, designed with the requirements of small businesses in mind, combines ease of use with versatility. You can use it as a solution for tracking and managing your tangible assets. It can also help you streamline your manual or Excel-based equipment inventory tracking.

It’s a trustworthy software for inventory management because it offers:

Ease of Use

Nest Egg’s Intelligent Inventory does not require any technical know-how to be used. Forget about flipping through page after page of a user guide or spending a ton on a consultant — you can simply get started by scanning the barcode on your purchases.

Just scan or take pictures, and Nest Egg will populate the equipment inventory database for you. Fast, simple, and effective — you can use it to manage small to vast equipment inventories equally well. The scanner works well with the latest Android and iOS devices, making it hassle-free for you to build your equipment inventory list.

Intelligent Tracking

You can also organize a diverse inventory in an easily trackable format, thanks to Nest Egg’s smart taxonomic feature that classifies products by categories and sub-categories.

Tracking your assets is no big deal, either. A centralized, cloud-based dashboard gives you a detailed overview of your assets. You can also manage the contact details of your suppliers, OEMs, employees, etc.

Each item in your equipment inventory list can also be tracked for its purchase date, lifetime, warranty, and more. In fact, Nest Egg will go a step further and give you warranty expiration alerts so that you can stay on top of things.

Every time an asset is assigned to an employee or team member, the Nest Egg dashboard will record it as a “lend” function, marking the allocation date and other necessary details. This feature boosts asset visibility and helps drive compliant usage.

Adaptability

Nest Egg is scalable and adaptable to businesses operating in the retail, healthcare, logistics, and information technology (IT) sectors. It works well for small to medium and large-scale businesses. You can also use it across multiple devices because it’s built to be a collaborative solution.

The workflows are also available in multiple formats like CSV and HTML so that you can easily integrate them with your existing systems.

Customer Support

If the extensive features are not impressive enough for you, there’s more. Nest Egg prides itself on excellent customer support. The solution is available in 32 languages to help with local usage but if you happen to run into roadblocks, the dynamic support team is always there to help you out.

To date, the team has managed to handle 2.24 thousand support tickets with a turnaround time of less than an hour.

Rest assured, Nest Egg will help you with your equipment inventory management no matter the problem.

You can choose from six pricing packages with varying levels of support features, depending on the needs of your business. Every package comes with a free trial period of 2 weeks and can be canceled anytime, so you don’t have to pay unless you are willing to!

Got a business that needs top-notch asset management but don’t want to break a sweat over it? Try Nest Egg!