School assets are valuable. There is a fixed budget to procure assets required during the academic year for various purposes. These assets include laptops, desktop computers, projectors, books, classroom and office furniture, sport and lab equipment, and others. Every educational institute has its own method of asset management. Some may depend upon the traditional register/file entry method or some may rely on spreadsheet entries.
But these systems lack at some issues like:
- Unorganized storage of data
- Less security to the data stored.
- Time-consuming tracking of asset
- Unsatisfactory reporting
- System more prone to asset theft and damage
Because of the above-mentioned flaws, the institutes may look for a better option. Vidyalaya brings out a software perfect match for the school asset management system that will fulfil all the requirements related to asset management.
What is a school asset management system?
A school asset management system is tailor-made system software that can come with school management software as one of the core modules or an individual module that accomplishes asset management activity with flawless accuracy. The educational institutes can reduce the cost and workload overhead by implementing the system by reducing the expenditure on replacement or lost/stolen assets.
There are two types of assets used in any school or college:
Hard assets
Hard assets are physical assets like laptops, books, school buses, projectors that are owned or maintained by the educational institute itself.
Soft assets
Soft assets may include the important documents, financial records that need to be stored for compliances and business purposes.
Vidyalaya’s school management software keeps track of each of the assets and stores it with a unique identity number. These numbers are usually barcodes or RFID tags. This can facilitate the personnel to make easy tracking of the assets.
What are the key features of a school asset management system?
A leading school asset management system should be enriched with major features and must fulfil all the asset management requirements. Commercial or business-oriented asset management systems differ from that are designed for educational management purpose in various manners so there is need for a software that is designed by understanding the special needs of the education domain. So, the features of school asset management can lure the management to adopt it:
Technology-based tracking
Finding the desired asset in the jargon register is time-consuming. Also, keeping a record of each asset by its unique ID number and making no mistake each time is difficult to manage. Many times, records can be wrongly written, asset ids can be wrongly entered, or manual entry of every transaction may lead to wastage of time and resources.
Vidyalaya’s school asset management system overcomes this problem by registering assets in the system with their unique Barcode or RFID number. As these IDs are automatically created, there is no chance of getting a duplicate ID, or wrong ID for the wrong type of asset. This unique ID system can also make the tracking process easier. It can give you asset details, current condition data within few clicks.
Know the current status of any asset
In the manual system of asset management, one may mislead the asset conditions that are broken, damaged, or stolen. This can cause major loss when the assets impacted are costly. Mostly in these types of scenarios, ownership is not accepted honestly as staff may need to bear the cost of the damaged asset.
Vidyalaya brings transparency in the system by strictly allowing the issue of the asset only after entering the assignee of the asset. This can help to know the real information about who owned the asset at what point in time, what was the condition of the asset when it was issued or returned. The school asset management system will work as a mirror where you can check the current and updated status of all your assets.
Hassle-free asset scheduling
The request for assets is a lengthy procedure when it is carried out in manual mode. Baby steps like filling the asset requisition form, checking the stock or availability of asset, assign it to the authorized assignee, checking the conditions at both asset issues and receive the time, making the appropriate entries in the respective registers are annoying and can increase the overhead.
Vidyalaya’s school asset management system cuts down the processes into two to three forms. The user needs to fill the asset requisition form and submit it. The system will take care of the rest of the steps like checking the stock and condition of the requested asset, taking the manager’s permission, checking the authenticity of the user. When the permission is granted, asset manager issues the asset to the assignee, and the system updates the stock instantly. With this automatic system, users can pre-book the assets or create a schedule for procurement also.
Easier notification and reporting
It is a common scenario in manual asset management that when a user requests an asset, it is not available due to pre-occupy or damaged or not in working condition status. But this can lead to inconvenience to the user because of the unavailability of assets at the desired time.
This can be avoided with Vidyalaya’s school management software by sending the notification of details of asset like assignee, location, time of issue. This will help the manager to keep an eye on inventory to avoid further inconvenience.
Real-data-based reports about assets will give you an exact scenario about the inventory. School management can get to see which assets are used frequently, rarely, shared among different departments. This realistic information can help the management to dedicate a better budget for the assets that are used mostly.
Mobile app to access data anywhere, anytime
With the help of the mobile app, Vidyalaya’s school asset management software can be accessed by authorized users anytime, anywhere breaking the location and time boundaries. No physical presence is required anymore to accept the asset requisition form, knowing the location of the asset.
School education is evolving. The traditional chalk and talk method have become outdated with the rise of virtual classes, whiteboards, online exams. But, have you noticed the paradigm shift from manual asset register to dedicated software for it? Isn’t it inviting? If yes, then join the queue and go ahead with the implementation. Vidyalaya will happily host the school management and let you be ahead with the software that is ahead of the time.
