Asset Manager
HR's own equipment pool — laptops, phones, meal cards, access cards, and company cars — kept separate from IT/Facilities' asset registry.
Overview
Asset Manager is HR's dedicated screen for tracking equipment and benefits HR is directly responsible for handing out to employees: laptops, phones, tablets, monitors, access cards, meal cards, and company cars. It lives under the Human Resources sidebar group, right after Document Entry, and is intentionally separate from the Asset & Equipment module used by IT/Facilities.
The two modules exist side by side on purpose. IT/Facilities manages a much larger and more technical inventory — servers, factory machinery, spare parts, maintenance schedules, warranty claims on capital equipment. HR only needs to know a much simpler thing: what did we hand this employee, and do we need it back. Asset Manager keeps that HR-facing question answerable without forcing HR staff into IT's inventory workflows, and without cluttering IT's registry with meal cards and access badges.
Two Related, Separate Screens
Don't confuse Asset Manager with the Assets item that also appears in the Human Resources sidebar group (right above this one in some views) — that one is a read-only report of which employees currently hold which assigned items, sourced from the same records Asset Manager manages. Asset Manager is where assets are actually created, stocked, repaired, and assigned or unassigned; the Assets report is where you review the assignment picture across the whole company.
Adding an Asset
- Click Add Asset in the screen header.
- Enter the Asset Name — a short, recognizable label (e.g. "MacBook Pro 16 — Marketing Pool").
- Select a Category: Laptop, Phone, Tablet, Monitor, Access Card, Meal Card, Company Car, or Other.
- Fill in Serial Number, Purchase Date, Warranty Until, Invoice No, and Invoice Amount (with currency) as applicable — none of these are required to save, but the more you capture the more useful the asset's record becomes later.
- Optionally add free-text Notes.
- Click Save. The new asset appears in the table with status In Stock, ready to be assigned.
A newly added asset always starts unassigned — assigning it to an employee is a separate step, described below.
Asset Categories
| Category | Typical Use |
|---|---|
| Laptop | Employee-issued laptops and workstations |
| Phone | Company mobile phones |
| Tablet | Company tablets |
| Monitor | External monitors issued for home or office setups |
| Access Card | Building or facility entry badges |
| Meal Card | Employee meal benefit cards |
| Company Car | Vehicles assigned to employees |
| Other | Anything that doesn't fit the categories above |
Asset Status
Every asset is always in exactly one of four states:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| In Stock | Available in the pool, not currently assigned to anyone |
| Assigned | Currently handed out to an employee |
| In Repair | Temporarily out of service for maintenance or repair |
| Retired | No longer in active use — kept for record-keeping |
Use the status filter above the table to narrow the list down to just one state — useful for quickly seeing what's currently sitting unused in stock, or what needs to come back from repair.
Assigning and Unassigning
From any row with status In Stock, click Assign Asset in the Assigned To column, pick the employee from the dropdown, and confirm. The asset immediately switches to Assigned status and the employee's name appears in that column.
To take an asset back, click Unassign next to the employee's name on an assigned row. The asset returns to In Stock and becomes available to assign again.
Assigning from the Employee's Own Profile
You don't have to come to Asset Manager to assign equipment — the Assets tab inside an individual employee's profile (Personnel > Employee > Assets) offers the same "Assign Asset" flow, scoped to that one person, with the option to link a laptop/phone/tablet/monitor to an existing IT stock item if your tenant has that sync enabled in Settings > Company.
Searching and Filtering
Use the search box to find an asset by name, serial number, or assigned employee's name. Combine search with the status filter to, for example, find "all laptops currently assigned to Ayşe."
The table supports multi-select via checkboxes on the left of each row (and a header checkbox to select or clear all visible rows at once) — a selection toolbar appears above the table showing how many rows are selected, with an option to clear the selection. Checkbox shape and appearance follow your Settings > Appearance > List Style preference, the same setting that controls multi-select tables across the rest of TotalApp.
AI Assistant
Asset Manager includes a built-in AI Assistant, opened from the collapsed AI Assistant tab anchored to the right edge of the screen (click it to slide the panel open; click the tab on the panel's own left edge, or its header X, to close it again). It can answer questions grounded in the currently visible (or selected) assets, such as:
- Which assets have expired or soon-to-expire warranty
- A summary of how many assets are in stock vs. assigned vs. in repair
- Which employees hold an unusually high or low number of assigned assets
- A breakdown of invoice spend by category
Select one or more rows before opening the assistant to focus its answer on just those assets, or leave the selection empty to have it consider everything currently visible in the table.
How This Differs From Asset & Equipment (IT/Facilities)
TotalApp deliberately keeps two separate asset systems rather than one shared one:
| HR Asset Manager | Asset & Equipment (IT/Facilities) | |
|---|---|---|
| Owned by | HR | IT / Facilities / Maintenance |
| Typical items | Laptops, phones, meal cards, access cards, company cars | Servers, factory machinery, spare parts, capital equipment |
| Lifecycle depth | Stock → Assigned → Repair → Retired | Full preventive maintenance schedules, IoT health alerts, work orders |
| Assignment target | Employees (HR's own personnel records) | Employees, but also assets/locations/technicians in maintenance workflows |
Optional Link to IT Stock
If your company enables "Sync HR hardware with IT Asset stock" in Settings > Company, then adding a Laptop, Phone, Tablet, or Monitor in Asset Manager lets you link it to an existing, unassigned item already tracked in the Asset & Equipment module instead of creating a brand-new free-standing record. Linking copies over the serial number and warranty date automatically, and assigning or unassigning the HR asset also updates the linked IT asset's status — so the same physical device never shows "in stock" on one side and "assigned" on the other. Meal cards, access cards, company cars, and any category marked "Other" are never affected by this setting; they are always HR-only records.