Asset manager: know where everything is, what it cost, and when it's due

"Where's the pressure washer?" is a small question with an expensive answer when the reply is "nobody knows." The asset manager is the module that makes that question boring.

The registry

Every asset gets a code — AST-0001 style, unique — plus a category, a location from a proper location tree (sites, buildings, rooms, trucks), and a status: in storage, in service, in maintenance, retired, disposed. Categories can define their own custom fields, so your vehicles carry odometer readings and your computers carry warranty dates without the schema growing a hundred never-used columns.

Financials live on the asset: purchase cost, date, vendor, warranty window. Book value is computed by straight-line depreciation over the category's default life — month-exact, not hand-waved — so "what's the fleet worth now" is a report, not an argument with your accountant.

Custody is a chain, not a sticky note

When someone takes an asset, they check it out — against themselves, with a timestamp. Check it back in and the chain closes. The rule the database enforces: one open custody per asset. History is kept forever, so "who had the thermal camera in March" has an answer with a name and a date on it. Anyone on the team can check something out for themselves; checking in on someone else's behalf needs a supervisor — small rule, big accountability.

Maintenance that finds you

Preventive maintenance plans come in two flavors: calendar-based (every 90 days) and meter-based (every 5,000 miles, every 250 hours — assets carry a meter reading and its unit for exactly this). The daily sweep finds due plans and opens a work order for each, deduplicated so an overdue plan can't rain twenty WOs on you. Assignment notifies the assignee; the plan's next-due date rolls forward automatically.

Work orders have a real lifecycle — open, in progress, on hold, done, cancelled — with downtime tracked, and entries for labor minutes and parts with unit costs. The reports page turns all of it into cost-by-category, maintenance cost by asset, and aging on open work.

The edges

When a purchase from the acquisition module is an asset — the trailer, the server — it belongs here after it arrives. And if you're migrating from a dedicated tool, the connectors pull your existing registry in: asset upserts keyed by the external ID, your provider staying the system of record where you want it to.

Everything speaks REST and CSV: the registry and work orders are readable through the API with labor and parts totals computed in the query rather than in a loop, and the asset list exports when the spreadsheet moment arrives. Migration is a first-class path too — connectors pull an existing registry in and match custodians by email, so a switch from a dedicated tool doesn't start with a re-typing project.

Retirement is handled like everything else — retired and disposed are real statuses with the financials kept, because an asset's paper life on the books often outlives its working one, and the record should know.

Related: purchases from acquisition become assets when they arrive, and crews and equipment pull from the workforce records.

How this compares

Asset tracking has good specialists — Snipe-IT for IT inventory, MaintainX and UpKeep for maintenance work orders. If you run a fleet of thousands of laptops or an industrial plant, they're worth evaluating seriously. The gap for a mixed small business is that assets end up tracked in whatever tool was nearest: a spreadsheet for the tools, the accounting software for the capitalized gear, sticky-desk memory for who has the drill.

This module keeps all of it in one registry with the mechanics specialists are known for. Custody is a chain, not a status field — open assignments are enforced by the database, so an asset can't be "with two people" — and checkout is self-serve for any team member. Preventive maintenance plans run on calendar intervals or meter readings (miles, hours), spawning work orders when they're due. Work orders carry labor and parts costs; depreciation runs month-exact straight-line for the books. And because assets live beside projects and purchasing, "which job was this excavator on" has an answer in the same workspace. The registry, the custody, the maintenance: one record per thing you own.

Try it

The asset manager lives under Asset manager in your sidebar. Register five things you've actually lost track of before, check one out to yourself, and set one maintenance plan deliberately overdue — then let the sweep open the work order and watch the loop close without you.