Employee Asset Tracking: How to Manage Equipment Issued to Employees

From laptops and mobile phones to tools and site equipment, businesses can quickly build up a significant number of assets that have been issued to individual employees.

Keeping track of all of them can be harder than it sounds.

As a business grows, a simple spreadsheet can turn into multiple records that are maintained by HR, IT and Finance. Equipment is often issued without being properly recorded, returned items are not updated correctly and assets can easily disappear during changes of role or when employees leave the company.

Employee asset tracking provides a much more structured way to record what has been issued, who is responsible for it and when it has been returned.

What is employee asset tracking?

Employee asset tracking is the process of recording company-owned equipment and other resources that have been assigned to individual employees.

Depending on the organisation, this could include:

• laptops and computers;
• mobile phones and tablets;
• tools and specialist equipment;
• uniforms and protective equipment;
• access devices;
• site equipment; and
• other company-owned resources.

A good asset record should make it very easy to establish exactly what an employee currently holds without needing to search through multiple emails and spreadsheets. 

This becomes more and more important as an organisation grows and the number of employees and assets increases.

Why is Tracking Employee Equipment So Important?

The most obvious reason to track company equipment is so that you know exactly where your assets are and who has them at any given time.

However, effective employee asset management can support several wider HR and operational processes.

Onboarding new employees

New starters may need several pieces of equipment before they can begin their role, and recording these against the employee as part of onboarding creates a clear record from the start of their employment. HR and other departments can see what has been issued rather than maintaining separate onboarding and equipment checklists.

Managing equipment during employment

Employees may receive additional or replacement equipment throughout their time with the organisation, and therefore keeping the asset record up to date provides a current view of the resources assigned to each employee. This can help prevent different departments from maintaining conflicting records.

Recovering assets during offboarding

Asset tracking becomes particularly important when an employee leaves the company.

Laptops, phones, tools and other valuable equipment need to be returned before or around the employee’s departure. If the asset register sits separately from the leaver process, it can be easy for individual items to be overlooked.

Connecting the two processes gives HR a clear record of what needs to be recovered.

What Are the Problems With Using Spreadsheets for Asset Tracking?

For a small organisation with relatively few assets, a spreadsheet may initially appear to be more than sufficient, but problems tend to emerge as the business starts to scale.

HR might record equipment against an employee’s onboarding checklist while IT maintains its own device register and Finance keeps another record for accounting purposes.

This can create several versions of the same information.

Spreadsheets also depend heavily on someone actually remembering to update them. An employee can return a laptop, receive a replacement phone or move departments without the central asset register necessarily reflecting the change.

The result is often an asset register that technically exists but cannot be relied upon to show the current position.

Should Employee Assets Be Tracked Within Your HR System?

For equipment that is directly assigned to employees, there are advantages to connecting asset tracking with the employee’s HR record.

The organisation already holds information about the employee, including their role and who their manager is, so recording assigned equipment against that same profile connects the asset with the person responsible for it.

It can also make asset management part of existing HR processes.

When somebody joins, equipment can be issued as part of the onboarding process. When they leave, outstanding equipment can form part of the offboarding process. If they change roles, the organisation has a central record of the resources currently assigned to them.

This reduces the need for HR, IT and Finance to maintain separate lists of the same employee equipment.

Employee Asset Tracking in XCD

XCD includes asset and equipment tracking within the core employee record.

Administrators can record all company equipment, devices and tools, while assigning them directly to an employee. The issue and subsequent return of equipment can then be recorded within the system.

A dedicated Equipment view provides administrators with a company-wide picture of allocated equipment, while the Employee Resources view shows the assets currently associated with an individual employee.

Because the information sits within the employee record, there is no need to maintain a separate asset database simply to establish which employee has been issued which piece of equipment.

Tracking Employee Vehicles and Mileage

Vehicles are another area where employee information and business administration can frequently overlap.

XCD allows company or personal vehicle details to be recorded against an employee and used when submitting mileage claims. XCD’s Time & Expenses Tracking Software then connects these records with the wider expenses and payroll process, including the appropriate tax and VAT treatment when mileage is reimbursed. 

Those records can then feed into expense and payroll processes, including the appropriate tax and VAT treatment when mileage is being reimbursed.

This means that vehicle information used for employee mileage claims can sit alongside the wider employee record rather than being maintained independently.

For organisations who require full operational fleet management, such as allocating and tracking a pool of company-owned vehicles, additional configuration is available. XCD’s standard vehicle functionality is primarily designed around employee vehicle records, mileage and reimbursement rather than operating as a complete fleet management system out of the box.

Bringing Asset Management Into the Employee Lifecycle

Employee asset tracking is about much more than just maintaining a list of all company property.

Equipment is issued to people, used by people and needs to be recovered when those people either leave the company or change roles. Connecting the asset record with the employee record therefore makes it easier to incorporate equipment management into the wider employee lifecycle.

For organisations who are managing growing numbers of employees and company assets, bringing these records together can provide a clearer view of what has been issued, who holds it and what needs to be returned.

XCD brings HR, payroll, expenses and employee asset information together within one platform, helping organisations reduce the number of separate records they need to maintain.