Hey Guys, I am looking to implement an asset management register for customers devices coming back in for repair. Does anyone use anything like this in their day to days? Any suggestions/advice? have you designed something yourself etc?
What data are you looking to capture? There are lots of free tools but I ended up writing an Access database as it allowed me to fully customise the fields and workflow. If you or a friend/colleague know your way around Access with a bit of VBA you should be able to knock something very usable together within a day.
Generally looking to keep a log of which customer machines we have back for depot repair effectively. We will be able to tell which machines we have stored as well as who is dealing with them. Currently, have a paper filing system of sorts.... I've started with an access database but its rudimentary at best!
Does it even need to be access? You could do something in excel even quicker. Are you collecting data from any systems that you need to interface with?
I've had cause to do similar, on a small-scale short-term basis: tracking hardware for group tests, like those 14 SFF machines I had that time. My solution: a modified Kanban board running on Trello's free tier. Basically, each machine got a card. The card then walked across the board, from "Begging Letter Sent" to "En-Route" to "Received" to "Photographed" to "Benchmarked" to "Return Booked" to "Returned," with a few bonus columns like "Rejected" or "They're Ignoring Me The Buggers" for good measure. A similar thing could work for you: "Booked" "Received" "Technician A" "Technician B" "Technician C" "Completed" "Return Booked" "Returned". No need to complicate things with a proper database, and even non-technical types can cope with "drag the card from Received to your column when you're working on it."
I'm using snipe-it for our in-house asset management. Roughly 2k assets, all running fine on an aws free tier micro size instance.