Key Concepts
Wasp Asset is built on a handful of ideas that everything else relies on. Once these click, the rest of the app makes sense quickly. This page explains each one in plain terms.
Assets
Section titled “Assets”An asset is something your organization owns and wants to keep track of — a laptop, a vehicle, a power tool, a piece of equipment. Wasp Asset tracks two kinds:
- Fixed Asset — an individual, uniquely identified item, usually with its own barcode and often depreciated over time. A specific laptop with its own asset tag is a fixed asset.
- Multi-Quantity Asset (MQA) — a group of identical, interchangeable items tracked by how many you have at a location, rather than one tag each. Twenty identical safety helmets in a supply room fit this model.
Asset Tag
Section titled “Asset Tag”An Asset Tag is the unique identifier — usually printed as a barcode label — on a fixed asset. Scanning or entering the asset tag is the fastest way to pull up a specific item.
Asset Type
Section titled “Asset Type”An Asset Type is a template that classifies your assets and sets sensible defaults for them, such as which fields appear and how they depreciate. Creating asset types up front makes adding new assets faster and more consistent.
Groups
Section titled “Groups”Groups are your own custom groupings of assets — a flexible way to gather related items together for reporting or everyday work, however makes sense to you. For example, you might group the laptop, docking station, monitor, and keyboard that make up one workstation, so you can check the whole set out to a new hire — or audit it — in a single step instead of handling each piece separately.
Sites and Locations
Section titled “Sites and Locations”- A Site is a building or campus — a physical place your organization operates.
- A Location is a specific spot within a site, such as a room, shelf, or bay.
Every asset lives at a location within a site, so you always know where to find it.
Employees, Departments, and Customers
Section titled “Employees, Departments, and Customers”Assets are often associated with people and groups: checked out to an employee, assigned to a department, or issued to a customer. These records let you answer “who has this?” at a glance.
Check Out and Check In
Section titled “Check Out and Check In”- Check Out assigns an asset to an employee, location, or customer — for example, handing a laptop to a new hire.
- Check In records that the asset has been returned and is available again.
Move and Move Orders
Section titled “Move and Move Orders”- Move relocates an asset to a different site or location.
- A Move Order is a request to move one or more assets; someone then fulfills the order to complete the move. This is useful when the person requesting a move isn’t the one physically making it.
Dispose and Recover
Section titled “Dispose and Recover”- Dispose retires an asset that’s no longer in service, recorded with a Dispose Reason (such as sold, scrapped, or lost).
- Recover brings a disposed asset back into service, recorded with a Recovery Reason.
Convert Asset
Section titled “Convert Asset”Convert Asset turns units of a multi-quantity asset into individually-tagged fixed assets — and only in that direction. For example, you might buy laptops in bulk as a multi-quantity asset, then convert them into fixed assets with their own asset tags as they go into circulation. It doesn’t turn a fixed asset back into multi-quantity stock, and it isn’t used to change one asset type into another.
Depreciation, Funding, and Contracts
Section titled “Depreciation, Funding, and Contracts”- Depreciation reflects how an asset loses book value over time. You set a Depreciation method and run Calculate Depreciation to keep values current.
- Funding records how an asset was paid for, supporting grant and budget reporting.
- Contracts track leases, warranties, and service agreements tied to your assets.
Maintenance
Section titled “Maintenance”Keep assets serviced and running:
- Quick Maintenance logs a single, one-off service action fast.
- Work Orders track planned or larger service jobs, broken into Tasks.
- Work Order Type Codes categorize the kinds of maintenance you perform.
Purchase Orders and Receiving
Section titled “Purchase Orders and Receiving”Order new assets from a Vendor with a Purchase Order, then Receive them to bring them into Wasp Asset when they arrive.
Audits
Section titled “Audits”An audit is a physical count that verifies your records match reality:
- Define an Audit Window — the scope and timeframe of the count.
- Audit by scanning or verifying the assets you find.
- Reconcile any differences between what you expected and what you found.
Condition
Section titled “Condition”An asset’s Condition describes its state — for example New, Good, or Damaged — so you can spot items that need attention.
Mass Update
Section titled “Mass Update”Mass Update changes a field across many assets at once, saving you from editing them one by one.
Editions
Section titled “Editions”Wasp Asset comes in Basic and Complete editions. The Complete edition unlocks more capabilities, so some features described in this help may not appear in every account.
Where to go next
Section titled “Where to go next”Each concept above has a home in the app and a page in this help that goes deeper:
- Assets → Fixed vs. multi-quantity and Creating an asset
- Asset types and groups → Asset types, Groups
- Check out and in, move, dispose → Actions overview
- Sites, locations, employees, vendors → Lookups overview
- Depreciation, funding, contracts → Contracts, funding, and depreciation
- Maintenance → Maintenance overview
- Purchasing → Purchase orders
- Audits → Audits overview
Related
Section titled “Related”- Welcome to Wasp Asset — what the product does and how this help is organized
- A Tour of the Screen — find each concept in the app
- Signing In and Out — get started