Asset Location
The location component of assets within ERPNext lets you define and manage physical or geographical locations where the assets of your organisation are either in use or stored. This is extremely acute when monitoring the location of assets in various offices, plants or operating locations in the instance where a company has decentralized or multi-branch structure.
Assets may be located in different areas like:
- Administrative offices
- Manufacturing units
- Warehouses
- Retail outlets
- Field service locations
For precise tracking and reporting, you can have a separate Asset Location record for every facility or sub-location (e.g., "Head Office – Floor 2 – IT Department").
Key Features of Asset Location
Location Name: An Identifiable and numeric/phonetic name representing physical location (e.g. "Karachi Plant", "Karachi HQ", "Ware House 3")
Address Details: Street address, city, state and postal code should be provided to define the exact location of the address to be used internally or during audit.
Latitude and Longitude: Geographical coordinates can be inserted for each location, allowing for map integration and visual representation. This is particularly useful for:
Field assets
- Remote site deployments
Geo-tagged asset reporting
Map View: ERPNext shows the location on a Google Maps view (in case of integration), enabling one to visualize the site from the Location record itself. This enhances navigation, particularly in distributed teams or service-based businesses.
Asset Movement and Tracking
When an asset is relocated to a different location — such as the movement of assets during the relocation of an asset to a regional office to the head office or vice versa — the relocation must be made traceable. This can be handled in ERPNext in Asset Movement:
- Just create a new Asset Movement record and indicate the source and destination locations.
- The system will automatically update the current location of the asset when the movement is submitted.
- Movement can be traced for audit trails, maintenance planning, and physical verification.
Using Asset Location records, organizations are able to:
- Have real-time visibility of asset distribution,
- Facilitate physical audits and inventory reconciliations,
- Improve accountability and control between departments and facilities,
- Increase compliance reporting for asset-intensive businesses.