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Welcome to the EquipTracking wiki!

Goal

This project aims to simplify the tracking and inventory of assets through the introduction of an Android smartphone application and QR code labels.

Context

Many NGOs need to track their assets (equipment) over multiple field locations to later account for these assets to the respective ‘buying’ donor. Due to the nature of our humanitarian work, assets rotate quite quickly between different projects, and therefore, also different field locations.

Currently, most NGOs register their assets in an Excel spreadsheet, mark the assets with a code using Dymo plastic labels, ask field staff to make an inventory of these assets, and then send the updated spreadsheet to the capital field office on a regular basis. The consolidation of spreadsheets coming from different field locations is done at the capital office level. Given some countries often have thousands of assets, this consolidation process is cumbersome and not error free.

Usage

The idea is that assets first registered by the organization at capital level are marked with a QR code (i.e. labels printed through a Zebra printer) that will contain information about the asset itself: asset ID, asset code and serial number.

The QR code should then be scanable using a smartphone’s camera and read against a MySQL database on the phone. Basic information such as date read, user, location (including GPS coordinates), current project, picture of the asset, and user signature can be updated on the phone for the scanned QR code. This information could then be uploaded as XML data to Onedrive or any other online website where it could be re-linked to an Excel spreadsheet.