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4 Ways to Reduce Cost with Equipment Tracking

You didn’t start your business to manage equipment, and as your company grows, keeping track of this equipment can often feel like a heavy burden and a time consuming process. However, when done with the latest technology, effective equipment tracking can be easier, quicker, and reduce costs, improving your bottom line. If you aren’t keeping track of your equipment your business will suffer. From wasted time looking for equipment, to employee theft or accidental losses, and an inability to schedule effectively, if you don’t have an asset tracking system in place, you will be wasting resources. New technology and equipment tracking systems can help you cut costs and improve your business. Barcode based tracking systems and the use of barcode scanners for data entry is quickly becoming the new standard. This technology allows you to track assets quickly, accurately, and in a real-time database accessible to multiple users. A small investment that can cut costs in the long run. Here are 4 ways effective equipment tracking will help your business:

Eliminate Time Wasted Looking For Equipment

How much time do you and your employees spend looking for equipment? Have you ever missed a deadline or lost a customer because you couldn’t find it in time? Locating equipment can be one of the most time consuming processes for an organization. It wastes time (and time=money) and it hurts employee morale because people get frustrated when they can’t find something they need. Using barcode asset tags and a real-time asset tracking system you can significantly reduce if not entirely eliminate this wasted time. You always know where an asset is and barcode scanners make it easy to enter data quickly without errors.

For firefighters, having the right equipment on hand can be the difference between life and death. For volunteer fire departments which often have limited resources, the time consuming process of tracking equipment can be a big problem. “Tracking the equipment by hand was very time consuming,” says Jamie Pugh, liaison officer for Lipscomb Fire and Rescue. “Since we’re 100% volunteer, it is important for us to be efficient. For safety purposes, it’s vital our equipment tracking be very accurate. If our tracking isn’t accurate, we aren’t able to provide the public safety services we are committed to provide.” However, after implementing the Wasp Mobile Asset system, an effective equipment tracker, Pugh saw big changes. It went from taking an hour to place equipment on a truck to just 20 minutes. “Since implementing Wasp MobileAsset, we have become safer, faster and more efficient,” explained Pugh. “And when there is an emergency, the firefighters now know the equipment is there and they know exactly where it is on the truck.”

Reduce Employee Theft and Accidental Losses

Hardly a month goes by without a new story of employees stealing equipment or organizations losing valuable tools and equipment. In one recent case, an employee was able to steal more than $40,000 worth of technology equipment from a school. If you are a small business you simply cannot afford to lose the equipment you need. Effective asset tracking systems are able to tell you who used a piece of equipment last and where it is supposed to be. By using asset tracking tools like barcode systems makes sure that employees know they will be caught if they steal and they will be held accountable if they lose equipment. Paladin Security was using Excel to track assets, but as the company began to grow it noticed that more and more equipment was missing. Some cases were genuine loss, but others seemed more like theft. The company realized it needed a more effective solution. “We were using an Excel spreadsheet to track our assets,” said Matt Carroll, a vice president and co-founder for Paladin. “This was far too difficult to manage our growing operation. Besides, the spreadsheet didn’t provide the immediate insight and reports we needed to rapidly take action.” Once the company implemented a Wasp asset tracking solution the company saw an immediate decline in missing equipment in addition to time saving Carroll estimates at $36,000 (from not having to search for lost items). “Now, we won’t be losing expensive assets like computers and Tasers,” Carroll explained. “We know who checked them out and when, plus our employees know it as well. Saving the potential loss of just one computer has justified the investment.”

Improve Scheduling Capabilities and Resource Management

Tracking equipment doesn’t just cut costs by avoiding losses and saving time searching for equipment, it can fundamentally improve how you manage your business. Tracking assets effectively helps you schedule their use better and manage your resources more effectively, ensuring they are always ready for use when you need them. Having an understanding of how your equipment is being used over time can help you plan the way you run your business and use resources. By staying aware of equipment status, you can make sure repairs are made in a timely fashion.

Reduce Time On Audit and Improve Financial Reporting

One of the biggest cost cutting benefits of effective asset tracking is saving time on audit prep and improved financial reporting. Asset tracking helps you with audit prep and by monitoring your equipment it can also help calculate depreciation and save money on taxes. For organizations that work with grants and need to account for spending, tracking your equipment will lead to better grant funding reporting and management. The City of Dallas’ Department of Intergovernmental Services needs to manage up to $15 million worth of grant funded assets. Part of that responsibility includes an inventory of all grant-funded items every two years. According to Dina Colarossi, Fund Analyst for Dallas’ Department of Intergovernmental Services, “We found that we were spending more time trying to fill in the gaps to make sure all equipment had been inventoried than actually analyzing the reports.” However, once Colarossi implemented a Wasp based asset tracking solution she saw big improvements. “Before MobileAsset, producing a complete asset report for an audit would have taken two weeks,” Colarossi said, “Now it takes between one or two days. Since we are also able to attach documents to the items in Wasp, we now have any records the auditors might ask for at our fingertips.” Tracking and managing your assets can be a burden or a boon, depending on how you approach it. But as you can see from these tips, using the latest technology and strategies you can use asset management to improve your business and your profits. If you take the right approach, instead of a headache you can turn asset tracking into a piece of cake. How could accurately tracking your equipment with barcode technology help save your company money?