Adding assets
Four ways equipment gets in, and what to record so it can be found again.
One at a time
Assets → Add asset. Choose the category and then the type, and the form changes to suit: a mobile phone is asked for an IMEI, a laptop for a serial number, a monitor for its size. Nothing asks a headset for its operating system.
You can also do this from the phone app, which is usually where it belongs — the serial is printed on the box in tiny type, and the app can scan it rather than have somebody copy sixteen characters by hand.
What is worth recording
Asset tagrequired
Your own label for the thing, and how people will look it up. Keep one convention across the fleet.
Type
Not decoration: the type decides which fields you are asked for, which sections the asset shows, and whether it appears when somebody filters for “all monitors”. Equipment with no type set is findable only by name.
Serial number, IMEI, MAC address
Unique within your company, and checked — a second asset carrying the same handset IMEI is refused rather than quietly created. Record whichever ones the type asks for.
Brand and model
What it takes to recognise the device on a desk without opening it.
Purchase and warranty dates
What makes the warranty report worth reading. They can be filled in later.
A spreadsheet, for a fleet you already own
Assets → Import Excel. The usual way to start: most companies arrive with a spreadsheet that has been maintained for years. Import it, then correct it in place — a bad row can be edited, and a row that should never have existed can be deleted outright by a super admin rather than pretending the equipment was disposed of.
Import what you have, not what you wish you had. Blank serial numbers are honest and fillable; invented ones are indistinguishable from real ones a year later.
From a purchase order
Equipment bought through PioAssets arrives already described. An approved request becomes a purchase order; when the boxes turn up, receiving them creates the asset records with the supplier, price and dates already attached, and each individually tracked line becomes its own asset ready to be assigned.
Discovery, for machines that report themselves
Computers running the agent report their own hardware, operating system, installed software and health. That is what fills the Hardware, OS & Security, Software and Health sections on a laptop — and why a headset does not have them: a headset will never report anything, so it is not shown four sections that can only ever be empty.
Then give it to somebody
An asset that nobody holds is inventory; an asset with a holder is accountability. Assign it from the asset itself, on the web or from the phone while you are standing next to the person. The recipient is asked to confirm receipt, and until they do, the record says the device left the store but nobody has said it arrived.