Assets vs. Inventory – What is the difference?
Inventory and asset tracking are both important, but what separates them? Why are there different applications for these seemingly similar processes? The answer lies in the purpose for each but first let’s examine the difference between inventory and assets.
Assets are defined as an economic resource that represents an ownership of value. This could be a truck, a piece of software or, yes, even an inventory of widgets. Inventory is a list of compiled assets for sale or use in another process. When it comes to the differences in tracking we need to look at assets as being here for long term use and inventory being here for consumption of some sorts. Think of it as the difference between a library and a book store.
An asset would be like a library. When tracking an asset we track them individually, we want to know certain information on specific items. When an item is scanned we can track maintenance information, age, location, or as in our library example – who checked it out. Inventory tracking systems can track any combination of this data and more – on an individual item basis.
A book store would represent our inventory tracking. Rather than being concerned with individual item data, we are more concerned with data of identical items. When an item is scanned we want to know how many of an item, add an item or remove an item from our inventory levels. The point is we want to track a collection of identical assets rather than on an individual basis.
MobileFrame’s Asset Management and Inventory Tracking Software gives you the flexibility of creating a tracking system to specialized for assets, inventory or both. Our 100% code-free platform allows you to make customizations to fit your needs. Click here to sign up for a demo.