If your business needs to keep track of expensive equipment, some form of equipment tracking system is essential. As a first step in setting up such a system, you must decide how you will number your items.

In some cases, your equipment and inventory items may already be numbered. You may be using a manufacturers SKU (stock keeping unit), or your own SKU, a serial number, or some other locally-developed numbering scheme.

If your items are already numbered, thats okay. You can use your existing numbering scheme as long as its convenient for you to use and is able to handle any growth you expect will happen. As we discuss the steps involved in designing a new number scheme, just evaluate how your existing one measures up in order to determine whether it will work for you in the future.

One of the first things to consider is whether your items are already barcoded.

If they are, is the barcode simply the item number printed out as a barcode (i.e. when you scan the barcode, does the item number appear on the scanner?) or is it some other number that you somehow have to match up to this item number? If you plan to be using barcodes scanners to scan items when they are checked in or out, then the length of the item number doesnt matter, as long as it fits on a reasonable-sized barcode label.

However, if you plan to key in the number when an item is checked-in or out, then the fewer the number of characters to enter, the faster and more accurate the data entry will be.

Numbers can be keyed much faster than letters, and a combination of numbers and letters is about the hardest thing to type in because youre constantly having to hunt and peck the keystrokes out.

If you have a choice, all numbers is best. There is one exception to this, and that is the use of a dash/hyphen. This can come in handy when you incorporate the category into the numbering scheme.

If you have, or expect to have 1000 or fewer equipment items, then a 4-digit numbering scheme (which gives you a range of 1000 to 9999 (or around 9000 potential numbers) is lots. Clearly, this gives you even more room for expansion than you think youll need, which is ideal considering that the unexpected always happens.

If you expect 10,000 items or less, then a 5-digit numbering scheme gives you a similar cushion, and so on.

If you want to incorporate the category into the number, then the number of categories you will have becomes important. If the number is less than 50, then you may be able to get away with a 2-digit category number (which gives you a range of 10 to 99, or 89 categories total). This gives you a small buffer for category growth.

If you expect to need more than 50, but less than 500, then a 3-digit category code will be best. If you expect more than 500 categories, are you sure youre defining your categories properly? Remember, categories exist to help you manage your information more effectively, but having too many categories is a pain in the neck. Trust me. Ive seen this movie.

If you are incorporating category into the number, then you need to revisit the earlier question about how many equipment/inventory items will you have in the next 5 years. What we need to know instead is, how many equipment/inventory items will you have in the largest category in the next 5 years. Again use the technique discussed above to decide how many digits the item number section needs to be.

Lets review and summarize by using an example.

Suppose you run a construction company with 40 categories of equipment (power drills, cordless drills, circular saws, portable table saws, etc), and about 350 different equipment and inventory items to track.

Since the number of items is less than 1000, a 4-digit numbering scheme gives you lots of room for growth. So, you could start your equipment/inventory number at 1000 and go up to 9999

If you want to include category codes in the number, then since the number of categories is less than 50, a 2-digit category code will be fine. If the maximum number of items in the largest category is less than 100, then a 3-digit item number will work. Thus you could number your items from XX-100 to XX-999 (where XX is the 2-digit category code)

Examples:

10-100 would be category 10, item 100 25-118 would be category 25, item 118

If you wanted to include a category code, but the number of categories was greater than 50, and the number of items in the largest category was greater than 100, then you would number the items from XXX-1000 to XXX-9999 (where XXX is the 3-digit category code)

Examples:

100-1000 would be category 100, item 1000 225-3112 would be category 225, item 3112

Of course, when you include the category code in the number, you always have the full range of item numbers to choose from in each category.

This means that 100-3112 and 112-3112 and 225-3112 are all different item numbers. Each one uses the item code of 3112, but since they are in different categories, they represent different equipment or inventory items.

If you happen to have items already barcoded, but the barcode does not match the numbering scheme you want to follow, you can simply relate the barcoded number to your preferred item number in whatever software program you choose to use.

You simply have to make sure that the program you purchase has a separate field for barcode and for item number and that when you scan the barcode the correct item comes up. That way you get the best of both worlds.

That basically is the long and short of equipment numbering. If you do this step right, your equipment tracking system will be easy to search and use.