Every other label on this site has to last until something is sold, used or despatched. An asset label has to still be readable at an audit nobody has scheduled yet, on a thing that has been moved, cleaned, sat on and forgotten for twenty years.
That is a different job, so it is a different label — different material, different adhesive, and a number that belongs to your register rather than to a product.
Not a demonstration and not somebody else's case study. This is our own office furniture, labelled when we set up the asset register, and photographed last week exactly as it sits. They are plastic asset labels — the second of the four manufactured options below, not the dearest.
That is the entire argument for this page. Anybody can tell you a label is durable. Nobody else can show you theirs after twenty-nine years, because most of them were not selling labels in 1996.
The company that manufactured these has been bought by a multinational since. We are still answering the same phone number.
That is the only question, and it decides the material rather than the design. All of these take a barcode and a number. They differ in what they survive and what they cost.
The cheap way first, because sometimes it is the right one. We can overprint poly or silver mylar here in Berowra on our own ZM400, the same way we do pre-printed labels — your numbers, your company name, a box in the post. It is the least expensive numbered asset label there is and it suits a small register, a quick start, or assets that will be replaced before the label is really tested.
For serious asset tracking we recommend the manufactured labels below, every time. Not because ours are bad, but because a printed image sits on the surface and these do not — and an asset register is a thing you build once and live with for twenty years.
Indoors. Office furniture, general equipment, anything living under a roof and handled by people rather than machinery. The image sits under an over-laminate that takes the wear instead of the print.
The entry point, and enough for most offices — though the ones in the photographs above went a step up to plastic.
Indoors, but on surfaces that fight back — textured plastic, powder coat, an awkward curve — or where the asset gets water and mild detergent on it now and then.
A polyester base under an over-laminate, with a far more aggressive adhesive: high initial tack, UV resistant, and made to keep holding as it ages rather than letting go in year three.
Indoors or outdoors, and the one that goes on curved or flat surfaces alike — which is why it is the most widely used of all of them. It conforms to a pipe, a casting or a motor housing without lifting at the edges.
Withstands chemicals, abrasion, solvents and high temperatures, and this is the one that starts to look permanent rather than applied.
Indoors or outdoors, flat surfaces only, and the hardest life a label can be asked to have. Thicker and stiffer than foil, with a high tack adhesive, for plant and equipment that lives outside and gets pressure washed.
If foil will conform to the surface, foil is usually the answer. This is for when it will not, and for when nothing is allowed to fail.
How long the manufactured ones take. Four to five weeks for aluminium or foil, and the clock starts after the artwork is approved rather than when you order — so the sooner the numbers and the layout are settled, the sooner it starts. They are made overseas and there is no version of that which is quick.
In practice this has never been a problem, and the reason is worth saying out loud: nobody rings up needing aluminium asset labels tomorrow. An asset register is something you plan, not something you react to. And if you genuinely are in a hurry, the overprinted poly and mylar above go out in days rather than weeks — which is a real reason to choose them, not just a cheaper one.
Sizes differ by material, so pick the material first. Each family has its own list, and they do not line up with each other — which matters more than it sounds.
| Material | Sizes | Smallest | Largest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 7 | 30 × 10 | 44 × 24 |
| Plastic | 6 | 30 × 6 | 55 × 25 |
| Aluminium foil | 9 | 32 × 10 | 64 × 38 |
| Rigid aluminium | 10 | 30 × 11 | 64 × 38 |
The two aluminium families share seven sizes, so moving between foil and rigid later is easy. The two indoor materials share almost nothing with them. So if there is any chance this register ends up on aluminium one day — because the assets move outside, or the next site is a yard — choose a size that exists there now, and the labels will still match in ten years.
And if none of the standard sizes suit, there are over five hundred others on request. Worth knowing before anybody redesigns a label to fit a list.
One thousand is the minimum, and they are sold in thousands. Below that the setup costs more than the labels do, and nobody is served by it. The price per label falls at 2,000, 5,000, 10,000 and 20,000.
Which is worth knowing if your register sits just under one of those numbers. Order spares anyway — assets arrive, labels get applied to the wrong thing, and a box of the right size sitting in a drawer is worth a great deal more than a four-week wait for the next fifty.
Three details that only matter once the box arrives. The cartons and trays are marked with the serial numbers inside them, so you can find 1000–1500 without opening four boxes. Orders come with cleaner and application instructions, because surface preparation is most of whether a label is still there in ten years. And some sizes have a break-away tab so the liner comes off without a fingernail — which sounds trivial until you are on the four hundredth one.
Why the aluminium ones last, in one sentence. The barcode is not printed onto the metal — it is photographically reproduced and then sealed inside the anodic layer of the aluminium itself. There is no ink on the surface to wear off and no laminate to peel, which is why these read after decades outdoors when a printed label would have gone chalky in a summer.
An asset label is only useful if its number means something in your register. So the numbering is yours: a start number, a quantity, and every label comes out different and in sequence — which is what the 000003, 000007 and 009050 in the photographs above are.
Send a spreadsheet instead and we will print straight from it, one row per label, if the numbers are not sequential or if each one carries a description. Your company name goes on them the way ours does. If you are starting a register from nothing, the honest advice is to start the numbers higher than you think you need and leave gaps between categories — renumbering an asset register later is a job nobody enjoys twice.
The printing works the same way as our pre-printed labels: you send the numbers, we set it up in BarTender, and a box arrives.
Powder-coated steel, painted timber, rough plastic, an oily machine casting. The surface decides the adhesive more than the material does, and a label that will not stay on is worse than no label because the asset goes missing from the register rather than obviously missing from the shelf.
Big enough to scan, small enough to fit. A laptop lid and a forklift take very different labels, and the scanner has to read it from wherever a person can comfortably stand — which on a large asset is further away than people expect.
The commonest way an asset register goes wrong is not a lost label. It is a label that moved — somebody peels the tag off a dead monitor, sticks it on the replacement so the count still balances, and from then on your register describes an asset that is not there.
A void label cannot be moved quietly. Lift it and the layers separate: the word VOID stays behind on the old asset and the label itself is visibly wrecked. Nobody has to catch them doing it — the evidence is there at the next audit, which is usually enough that it never happens.
Available on the aluminium foil labels in three sizes — 32 × 10, 38 × 13 and 38 × 19. Worth it wherever assets are leased, insured, depreciated, or simply worth enough that somebody might be tempted.
An asset audit is a person walking around scanning things, so the label has to suit the scanner as much as the asset. If that scanner does not exist yet, the cordless ones are the usual answer and a mobile computer is the answer for a large site.
That is the call worth making before you order labels rather than after. What you are numbering, how many, and who scans them afterwards changes every one of those answers — and we have been on the other end of that conversation since 1991.
