Keep a record of everything your company owns and who is holding it right now.
The Asset Tracking module gives your HR and admin team one place to manage company assets such as laptops, phones, desks, vehicles, and software licenses.
You can track each asset’s details, condition, cost, and assigned employee. This makes it easy to see what the company owns and who currently has each asset.
Where to Find It #
- All company assets: Dashboard → Tracking → Asset
- One asset’s full details: open any row from that list (Action menu → View)
- Your own assigned assets: Dashboard → Settings → Account tab → Assets tab
- Another employee’s assets: Dashboard → Employees → open an employee → Assets tab
- Who can do what: Dashboard → Admin → Permission → Tracking
Good to know: in the left sidebar the menu reads Tracking → Asset. That one page holds every asset in the company.
Who Can Use This Feature #
Asset Tracking is included in the higher subscription plans only. If your company’s plan does not include it, the page will tell you: “This feature is not available on your current plan.” On those plans the whole Tracking group is also hidden from Admin → Permission, so if you cannot find the asset permissions at all, that is usually why — check your plan first.
The Subscriber Admin always has full access. Everyone else gets access from Dashboard → Admin → Permission → Tracking, where these five permissions live:
- Create Asset — action: Create. Shows the New Asset button, for adding an asset from a blank form.
- View Asset (For Own) — action: View. Lets the person see only the assets they currently hold.
- View Asset (For All) — action: View. Lets the person see every asset in the company.
- Edit Asset (For All) — action: Update. Lets the person change any asset: its details, its owner, its status, its purchase information, and its uploaded files.
- Duplicate Asset (For All) — action: Update. Shows the Duplicate option, for adding an asset by copying one you already have.
Permission Behavior
- There is no “Edit (For Own)” for assets. Holding an asset does not let you edit its record. Even the current owner needs Edit Asset (For All) to change anything.
- Adding and duplicating are two separate rights. You can hold one without the other. Someone with only Duplicate Asset (For All) can add assets by copying existing ones, but will not see the New Asset button at all.
- Without either view permission you see nothing. The page opens, but instead of a list it says “You don’t have permission to view any assets.” That message means the permission is missing — not that the company has no assets.
All of these permissions can be assigned directly to an employee, or to an entire team at once (so everyone on that team inherits them). See the Permissions Management guide for how to assign permissions.
Before You Start #
A few minutes of preparation saves a lot of clean-up later:
- Check your plan includes Asset Tracking, and give the right people the permissions above.
- Agree on how you will name Asset Tags. Every asset needs one, it must be unique in your company and you cannot reuse one that is already taken, so something like LAP-001, LAP-002 works better than a random label.
- Make sure the owner can be picked. The Current Owner list only shows employees who are active and hold a license (a seat). If someone is missing from the list, sort out their seat or employment status first.
Adding a New Asset #
Go to Dashboard → Tracking → Asset, click New Asset, and fill in the form:
- Asset Tag — required, 2–50 characters, and unique in your company. If the tag is already taken you will see “Asset tag ‘LAP-001’ already exists” — pick a different one.
- Title — optional, up to 150 characters. A friendly name people will recognise, like “Marketing Team Laptop #3”.
- Asset Type — required, up to 50 characters. Free text you type yourself, such as “Laptop” or “Vehicle”. Keep your spelling consistent so searching and filtering stay useful.
- Status — required. You choose one of five: Available (the default), Reserved, In use, In repair or Retired. Please read Retiring an Asset below before choosing Retired, because it clears the current owner.
- Manufacturer, Model, Color — optional; up to 100, 100 and 50 characters.
- Serial Number — optional, up to 100 characters. If you do enter one, it has to be unique in your company. If another asset already has it you will see Serial number “SN-123” is already used by asset LAP-001. — which is helpful, because it tells you exactly which asset has it. Leaving it blank is always fine, and blank serials never clash with each other.
- Purchase Date and Purchase Price — optional. The price cannot be more than 1,000,000.
- Order — optional, up to 100 characters, for a purchase order or order reference number.
- Current Owner — optional. The employee holding the asset today. Only active, licensed employees appear in this list.
- Previous Owner — optional. Who held it before. Unlike Current Owner, this one can be someone who has already left the company, so your history stays intact.
- Due Date — optional. A date you set yourself for a return, a renewal or a replacement. It is only a note to yourself — Office-X does not send a reminder when it arrives.
- Additional Notes — optional, up to 500 characters, for condition notes or anything else worth recording.
You can also upload files, in two separate boxes:
- Device Photo — images only (JPG, JPEG, PNG or WEBP), up to 5 files, each up to 2MB.
- Attachment — PDF only, up to 5 files, each up to 2MB. Handy for invoices and warranty papers.
These are two independent boxes, so one asset can carry 5 photos and 5 PDFs — not 5 in total. Click Add to save. If you set a Current Owner, the asset shows up in that employee’s own asset list straight away.
Good to know: the employee is not notified when you assign an asset to them — no in-app notification and no email. They will simply see it the next time they open their own Assets tab, so if it matters, tell them yourself.
Managing Assets #
Every row on the asset list has an Action menu. What you see in it depends on your permissions:
- View — opens the full details: owner information, all the asset data, and the uploaded files, which you can preview or download. Needs View Asset (For Own) for your own assets, or View Asset (For All) for any asset.
- Edit — lets you update any field at any time: the Asset Tag, the owners, the status, the notes, the purchase details and the uploaded files. Needs Edit Asset (For All).
- Duplicate — opens a form already filled in from an existing asset, so adding a second, similar item is quick. Needs Duplicate Asset (For All).
Good to know — what Duplicate copies, and what it does not. It is a copy, not a blank form:
- Cleared for you to fill in: Asset Tag, Serial Number and Order.
- Copied across: everything else — including the Current Owner, the Previous Owner, and the uploaded photos and attachments.
- So if the new asset is a different physical item held by a different person, remember to change the owner fields yourself before you save.
Good to know — there is no Delete. Once an asset is created, its record stays forever. If an item is sold, lost or no longer in use, change its Status instead of trying to remove it. That way your history stays complete for audits.
Retiring an Asset #
Setting the Status to Retired does a little more than change a label, so it is worth knowing before you use it:
- The person who was holding it is moved into Previous Owner, and Current Owner is cleared. That is on purpose — a retired item is not with anyone any more, and this keeps a record of who had it last.
- As soon as you pick Retired in the form, the Current Owner box empties and stops accepting a name. Choose a different status if you need to keep an owner on it.
- On the asset list, retired rows show no current owner.
- Nothing is deleted, and you can change the status back later. The old Current Owner will not come back on its own, though — you would set it again yourself.
Finding the Assets You Need #
Once you have more than a handful of assets, the toolbar above the list does the work for you.
- Search — You can search by Asset Tag, Title, Model, and Asset Type.
- Filters — filter by Status, Current Owner and Previous Owner (both owner boxes let you search an employee by name). Click Apply to use them and Clear to reset. While a filter is on it is shown as a small badge, so you always know why the list looks short.
- Columns — turn any column on or off, so you keep only the ones your team cares about.
- Rows per page — 10, 20 or 30.
- Sorting — click a column heading to sort.
The columns you can show or hide are: Asset Tag, Title, Manufacturer, Model, Serial Number, Color, Current owner, Previous owner, Asset Type, Purchase Price, Purchase Date, Order, Status and Action.
Viewing Your Own Assigned Assets #
Every employee has a second, much simpler place to check what they are holding. No asset permission is needed here, because it only ever shows your own record:
Dashboard → Settings → Account tab → Assets tab
You get a card called Assigned Assets with a count, listing the Asset Type (with the Asset Tag underneath), Title, Manufacturer/Model, Status, Serial Number and Due Date for everything you currently hold as Current Owner. Below it, a second card repeats each asset in more detail — Title, Manufacturer, Model, Color, Serial Number, Purchase Date, Purchase Price, Due Date and any condition notes.
Good to know: this page is for looking things up only. To see attachments, or to change anything, go to Dashboard → Tracking → Asset and open the asset there (which needs View Asset (For Own) or View Asset (For All)).
Viewing an Employee’s Assets from Their Profile #
You can also check what one particular employee is holding, straight from their profile — no need to search the main list:
Dashboard → Employees → open an employee’s row (Action menu → View, or just click the row) → Assets tab
It is the same “Assigned Assets” view described above, just for that person instead of you.
Good to know: this tab follows the rules for viewing employee profiles, not the asset permissions. You can open it if you are the Subscriber Admin, if you hold View All Employees, if you hold View Employees (Subordinate) and the person reports to you, or if it is your own profile. So it is quite possible to see someone’s Assets tab without holding any asset permission at all — and the other way round too.
Like the Account version, this one is read-only. For editing, reassigning an owner or checking attachments, go to Dashboard → Tracking → Asset.
Notifications and Activity Log #
- This module sends no notifications. Adding an asset, assigning it, editing it or retiring it sends nobody an in-app notification or an email — not even the new owner. Assets are a record you keep, not a request that needs somebody’s approval.
- Everything is written to the Activity Log. Creating an asset, editing one, and clearing its photos or attachments are all recorded with who did it and when, along with details such as the asset tag, type, status, serial number, price and file counts. So if you ever need to answer “who changed this?”, the Activity Log has it.
Summary #
Asset Tracking keeps your company property organised, accountable and ready for an audit. In short:
- Assets are created once and kept forever — you change the Status instead of deleting.
- Current and previous ownership is always on record, so you can see who has an item now and who had it before.
- Retiring an asset moves the holder into Previous Owner and clears Current Owner for you.
- Asset Tag and Serial Number are unique, so two records can never quietly describe the same device.
- Permissions decide who can add, view, edit or duplicate — and the Activity Log records every change.
- Purchase price, purchase date and due date are yours to fill in and use for your own planning. Office-X stores them as plain fields; it does not calculate depreciation or send replacement reminders.
