Know which project paid for each vehicle, laptop and solar kit, which field office holds it, who is responsible for it — and what happens to it when the project ends.
An NGO’s assets are shaped by its funding. The same organization may run a health project, a water project and an education project, each funded by different donors, each with its own end date and its own rules about what happens to equipment afterwards.
Add each country office, field site and project.
Tag vehicles, laptops, generators and equipment, and link them to a project.
See who holds each asset, where it is, and produce verification reports quickly.
When a donor asks where their funds went, you can show them — asset by asset.
The day-to-day failures NGO teams describe before they move off spreadsheets and paper registers.
Donor reports and end-of-grant reviews often ask for a list of assets bought with the grant, where they are and what condition they are in. If purchases were logged only in the finance system, that list has to be rebuilt by emailing every field office.
Vehicles, laptops and solar equipment sit in offices that head office rarely visits, sometimes with poor connectivity. Verification happens once a year if at all, and the list that comes back is whatever the office manager remembered.
Program officers and drivers move on at the end of contracts. Without a clear record of what each person holds, equipment leaves with them, is passed informally to a colleague or ends up unaccounted for in a store room.
When a project closes, its equipment may need to be transferred to another project, handed to a partner or government body, sold or disposed of — often according to the donor’s agreement. Without a register that knows which assets belong to which project, closeout is a scramble.
A single field office may hold assets from three projects and core funds side by side. A shared spreadsheet rarely distinguishes them reliably, so the same laptop can be claimed by two budgets or by none.
Define custom fields such as Project, Donor / grant reference, Budget line and Project end date, as selects, text, dates or currency. Make them required so no donor-funded purchase is registered without them. Filter and export the register by any of these fields.
Learn moreSet up each country program and field office as a site, with its buildings, rooms and stores beneath. Every asset has a place, and head office can filter the whole register by country or office.
Learn moreAssign each asset to a custodian — a program officer, driver or office manager — and a department. Issue shared equipment on check-out with a due date and condition, and record the return when it comes back.
Learn moreField staff run stock-takes with the mobile app, scanning QR labels office by office. Scanning works offline and syncs when the connection returns; the reconciliation shows what was found, missing or unregistered.
Learn moreAttach invoices, delivery notes, photos and handover forms to each record, so the proof a donor might ask for sits with the asset rather than in someone’s inbox.
Learn moreFilter by project and end date to see what must be decided. Record transfers to another project or partner as movements with a reason and reference, and record disposals with method, date and proceeds.
Learn moreDepreciation by category gives each asset a current net book value next to its purchase cost, useful for donor reports, insurance and deciding whether equipment is worth transferring.
Learn moreWhen equipment arrives, register it with its purchase cost, supplier and invoice, fill in the required Project and Donor fields, attach the invoice, print a QR label and assign it to the field office and custodian who will use it.
Filter the register by the Donor or Project field, confirm recent verification for each field office, and export to Excel or CSV with location, custodian, condition, purchase value and current value.
Filter by custodian to list everything the departing officer holds, return any open check-outs, scan each item and move it to their replacement or the field store. The history keeps the handover date and who recorded it.
As the end date approaches, list the project’s assets and their condition. Once the disposition is agreed, update the Project field for assets moving to a new project, record movements for items handed to partners, and record disposals for items sold or written off.
On the phone · NGOs
Field staff count an office or a warehouse with the phone wherever they are. Scans, moves and check-outs wait on the phone until there is signal, and the Sync centre shows what is still to send. Back at base, export the register by project or donor to Excel or CSV.
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An illustrative NGO overview beside a real Asetavo screen.
Categories and custom fields keep the details each group needs — serials, warranty, custodian, room.
4x4 field vehicles · Motorcycles · Boats and outboard engines · Bicycles for community workers
Laptops and tablets · Mobile phones · Satellite phones and radios · Routers and VSAT kits · Printers and projectors
Clinic and diagnostic equipment · Cold-chain fridges · Water testing kits · Survey and measurement equipment · Training equipment
Solar panels and inverters · Batteries · Generators · Solar pumps and lighting kits
Desks and chairs · Tents and field shelters · Filing cabinets and safes · Storage containers
Items held in field stores before distribution · Spare parts · Equipment awaiting transfer or disposal
For any donor or project, list every asset with its project, funding source, custodian, location, purchase value, current value, project end date and disposal status. Project, funding source and end date are custom fields you define; location, custodian, values and status come from the register. It is one filtered view and one export rather than a round of emails to field offices.
Each field office runs its own stock-take with the mobile app, scoped to its site. Head office watches reconciliation results come in and follows up only on the variances — missing, misplaced or unregistered items — instead of travelling to count everything.
When a project ends and its vehicles or laptops move to a new project, update the Project field and record a movement with the donor approval reference. The asset keeps its full history, including which project originally paid for it.
For equipment donated to a local partner at project close, record the movement or disposal with the handover date, recipient and signed handover form attached, so the transfer is documented if a donor asks later.
Satellite phones, GPS units, cameras and survey kits shared by field teams are checked out with due dates. Overdue items are flagged, and each return records the condition the equipment came back in.
Breakdowns in the field are expensive. Keep service schedules and repair history on the asset itself, so a vehicle’s condition can be shown at any point in the project.
Donors and auditors often want both what was spent and what is left. Asetavo keeps purchase cost, depreciation and disposal on the same record, and your own policies decide how those figures are used in reports.
Run one workspace for the whole organization, with each country program and field office as its own site, so head office sees the full picture and each office manages its own assets.
Field offices need tags that are cheap, work with any smartphone and do not depend on installed infrastructure. For most NGOs that means QR labels, with more durable options for vehicles and outdoor equipment.
The default for laptops, furniture, medical and program equipment. Printed labels, scanned with the mobile app — including offline in the field.
What is QR?Useful where suppliers or a partner already applied barcodes to equipment; scan those instead of re-labelling.
What is Barcode?Durable tags for vehicles, motorcycles, generators and solar equipment exposed to weather, where printed labels fade.
What is NFC?Worth it only in larger central warehouses or country offices where many items are counted often; most field offices won’t need it.
What is UHF RFID?Not sure which to use? Try the tag technology selector or compare plans.
Field staff should be able to scan and verify without seeing budgets, and finance should be able to report without editing locations. Permissions in Asetavo are granted per role, and every change is recorded.
Most NGOs report to donors from spreadsheets and their finance system. Asetavo feeds those with exports today, and with the REST API where you have a developer or integrator.
Agree the funding fields your donors need — typically Project, Donor / grant reference and Project end date — and which are required.
Create country programs and field offices as sites, and add departments and custodians for each office.
Import the current lists from each office with the Excel/CSV import wizard, mapping project and donor columns to your custom fields.
Ship QR labels to each field office, have staff tag and verify with the mobile app, and resolve the variances from head office.
Register every new purchase at delivery, verify before each donor report, and review assets against project end dates as closeout approaches.
Something we didn’t cover? Walk us through your sites and assets and we’ll show you how Asetavo would be set up.
Book a demoBook a demo and we’ll set up a sample organization with projects, donor fields and field offices — or send us one office’s asset list and we’ll show it in Asetavo.
No card required · Workspace ready in minutes · Simple USD pricing
