Fixed Asset Physical Inventory, Starting with the Undetected List Instead of the Whole Register

In mid-December, a printed asset list lands on the desk of the person in charge of the physical inventory. It is a thick stack with one line per asset: the asset number, the description, and the location on the register. With the list and a barcode scanner, they go floor by floor, scanning the asset label stuck on each item one at a time.

Most lines are crossed off quickly. Monitors, projectors, and lab instruments sit where the register says they are, and when the scanner beeps, it is on to the next line. What keeps the count from finishing is the handful of lines left at the end of the list: a laptop that is not at its desk, measuring equipment moved to a storeroom on another floor, a camera that was borrowed and never came back.

The scene also comes around on a schedule set by rules. For equipment acquired under a federal award, 2 CFR 200.313(d)(2) requires that a physical inventory of the property be conducted and the results reconciled with the property records at least once every two years. For a company whose fiscal year ends on December 31, confirming assets and inventory at year-end falls in the same weeks.

If the assets carry location tags, the list you carry out on count day changes from the start. Take out the assets the tags have already confirmed, and what people need to go and find comes down to the "undetected list" and the items tags cannot tell you about. What remains is how to build that list and in what order to work it down.

I. Splitting the register into four groups before the physical inventory

If the assets carry BLE tags, preparation starts in Nearby Search in the control software ORBRO OS. Pick a date and it shows the number of registered tags, detected tags, and undetected tags, along with the detection rate. The detection rate is the share of registered tags that a receiver picked up that day. For each tag you can also see which receiver (TwinTracker) it was picked up near, because ORBRO BLE Location Tracking reads the distribution of assets by the receiver nearest each tag. Each receiver carries its installation location, and the results for each date can be downloaded to Excel.

Hold these results up against the register and the assets split into four groups.

1. Confirmed assets: The tag was picked up and the location matches the register. No need to go looking.
2. Assets in a different location: The tag was picked up, but in a different zone from the register. Decide whether to fix the register or move the asset back.
3. Undetected assets: The tag is registered but was not picked up. This is the list to go after first on count day.
4. Assets without tags: Scan their labels or count them the way you always have.

Don't look at a single day. Page through the daily results for the week or two before the count, and the tags that have been missing all along separate from the ones missing now and then. A tag that was picked up again recently means the asset is on the premises, so the top of the undetected list goes to the tags that have been missing all along.

II. What a tag confirms and what people still have to check

Even the first group leaves something for people to look at. What a tag tells you stops at the fact that the tag was picked up in that zone. Whether a monitor's screen is cracked, or whether an instrument is missing a component, is for a person to see.

What to confirm	Does the tag settle it	What people do
Is it on the premises	Settled here for detected tags	Go looking for undetected assets only
Which zone is it in	Down to the nearest receiver and zone level	The exact spot, such as a shelf or drawer
Inside metal cabinets and drawers	The signal weakens, so it may stay undetected	Mark the storage location and open the door to check
Assets that cannot take a tag	Not applicable	Scan the label, or register by storage container
Physical condition (damage, function, components)	Unknown	Check by eye against the organization's inventory standard
Consumables and stock quantities	Does not count quantities	Confirm quantities with a stock count

Metal cabinets are a condition to settle at the design stage. Inside storage enclosed in steel plate, radio has a hard time getting out, and the tag signal may not reach a receiver. Since this comes from how things are stored, mark on the register which assets live in cabinets, then gather them separately from the undetected list and check them in the order you open the doors. Items that are hard to tag directly are sometimes registered with their storage box or case as a single asset.

There is one objection: if some assets cannot take a tag, won't you end up doing a full physical inventory anyway? Assets without tags are counted the way they always have been. What changes is the length and order of the list people carry around. The list gets shorter by as many assets as the tags have confirmed, and the lines that remain are already split into things to find and things to look at.

So it makes more sense to choose what to tag by the time spent finding it than by the asset's value. Assets that move around often and are shared among departments come first, like instruments in a research lab, mobile equipment in a hospital, and jigs and fixtures in a plant. Tag a desk that never leaves its spot, and the count takes hardly any less time.

III. On physical inventory day, working the undetected list down

A single line on the undetected list can hide several stories. The asset may be stored where there is no receiver, sit inside a metal cabinet, have left the site for use elsewhere or for repair, have lost its tag, or really be gone. Build the order so these stories get sorted out quickly.

First, look at when and where the tag was last picked up. The tag list in Device Manager shows each tag's status and its Last Seen time, with a battery indicator on the same row, so tags due for replacement can be pulled out at the same time. Pick the last-seen date in Timeline, and it shows in time order which zones that tag stayed in that day. The search starts in that zone.

Second, check against internal records. If the tag was last picked up near an exit, look first at removal requests, repair orders, and loan records. A setup that records assets leaving at the exit is covered separately in our article on asset exit control.

Third, record each result with its reason. Sorting results into a few categories, such as inside a cabinet, taken off site, tag reattached, or not found, speeds up preparation for the next count. Add a storage location mark to assets that turned up in cabinets, and reattach fallen tags and confirm their link to the asset number.

Fourth, hand any assets that are never found over to your organization's procedure, with the date and zone where each was last picked up attached. That is the starting point for tracing the cause.

IV. Assets whose register location and actual location differ

The second group needs no search, but it does need sorting out. Take an asset the register lists in a third-floor lab whose tag has been picked up in a shared second-floor storeroom for weeks.

To look at assets one at a time, use Timeline. Pick the asset's tag and step through the dates to see which zones it stayed in, and download to Excel to get dwell time by zone. A day or two most likely means it moved while in use, while weeks in the same place mean that place is, in practice, its home.

To look at a whole zone at once, Zone Counting is the right tool. Create a tag category for assets in Settings and set up counting for each zone, and you get the number of asset tags in that zone with an hourly record, downloadable as CSV. Put it next to the quantity the register assigns to that zone, and you can start with the zones where the gap is largest.

Assets in a different location are sorted out in one of two ways. If the asset is actually being used there, fix the register, and if it should not be there, move the asset back. Which it is, the department using the asset decides. The data's part ends at bringing up the list to decide on, together with how long each asset stayed. Once the register is fixed, the reference locations for the next count line up too.

V. What to decide before you start

1. A log linking tags to asset numbers. For the undetected list to read directly as an asset list, each tag ID has to be tied 1:1 to an asset number. When a tag moves to another asset, update the log at the same time.
2. Zone names and the register's location units. If the register records location by floor and room, draw the zones in the same units with the same names. This is what decides how long it takes to reconcile the downloaded results with the register.
3. Storage condition marks. Mark in advance the assets kept in metal cabinets, safes, or basement storerooms where no receiver will go. Point out such spaces when the receiver layout is designed, and you can decide from the start how far tags will do the confirming.
4. Time for records to build up. Telling tags that are always missing from ones that are sometimes missing takes daily records. Finish tagging and receiver installation well ahead of the count, not right before it.
5. The format the results go into. Decide which fields of your existing inventory count sheet or fixed asset management system the downloaded Excel data goes into.

Closing thoughts

Go back to that December printout, and what held up the person in charge was not the thickness of the list but the few lines at its end. Take out the assets the tags have confirmed, and the physical inventory starts from those few lines. People's eyes go to checking condition and quantity rather than to searching.

ORBRO builds its own BLE receivers (TwinTracker), tags, and the control software ORBRO OS. Registered and undetected tags, zone histories, and quantities are all viewed in the same ORBRO OS, and the results are downloaded as Excel and CSV to reconcile with your existing register. If your assets already carry BLE tags, we will also check whether they can be used as they are. Send us the types of assets in scope and how they are stored, and we will start with you on a design that splits the assets tags will confirm from the ones people will check.