IT asset register template (free CSV)
A spreadsheet is the right asset register for a lot of companies. If that is you, here is the one we would use — the columns worth having, the validation rules that keep it honest, and nothing you will not maintain.
No email address, no sign-up. It opens in Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice.
How to use it without it rotting
Every asset register decays. The ones that survive have one rule behind them: the register is updated at the moment the asset moves, by the person who moved it, as part of something they were already doing. A monthly "please update the sheet" email is not that, and it has never worked anywhere.
In practice that means two hooks. Issuing a device is part of onboarding, and recovering it is part of offboarding. If those two are honoured, the register stays roughly right forever. If they are not, no amount of software will save it.
- One row per physical thing, identified by serial number and nothing else.
- Dates in YYYY-MM-DD. Every other format will betray you when you sort.
- One vendor spelling. Decide today whether it is "Dell" or "Dell India" and never vary.
- Status from a fixed list: in-use, in-stock, repair, retired, lost. Five is enough.
- Never delete a row. Set status to retired and keep the history.
The columns we left out on purpose
MAC address, IP, installed software, last-seen date. All useful, none maintainable by hand — they change without anyone touching the sheet, so within a quarter they are confidently wrong, which is worse than absent. Those belong to a discovery tool or to proper asset software, not to a spreadsheet.
Also missing: a free-text notes column, which we admit you will add anyway. If you do, keep it for genuine one-offs. The moment you are parsing your own notes column for structured information, that information deserves a column.
What is in the file
| Column | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
asset_tag |
Yes | Your own label, e.g. ITAM-0412. Unique, never reused. |
serial_number |
Yes | From the device. The one field you cannot get wrong. |
category |
Yes | Laptop, desktop, monitor, phone, printer, network, other. |
make |
Yes | One spelling per vendor. Pick it now. |
model |
Yes | As printed on the device, not the marketing name. |
status |
Yes | in-use, in-stock, repair, retired or lost. |
assigned_to |
No | Employee email. Blank when in stock — never "N/A". |
location |
No | Office or site. Useful the first time you do a physical audit. |
purchase_date |
No | YYYY-MM-DD. Drives the age and warranty reports. |
purchase_cost |
No | In rupees, excluding GST. Numbers only, no symbols. |
invoice_number |
No | Your finance team will thank you at audit time. |
warranty_expiry |
No | YYYY-MM-DD. The column that pays for the whole file. |
amc_expiry |
No | YYYY-MM-DD, if the asset is under an AMC. |
notes |
No | Genuine one-offs only. Not a second database. |
Questions
Is a spreadsheet good enough?
Under about a hundred and fifty assets, with one person maintaining it and nobody auditing you, yes — and anyone who says otherwise is selling software. Our comparison page walks through exactly where that stops being true.
Will this import into the product later?
Yes. These are the columns the importer expects, which is the point of publishing the file rather than describing it. A template that has drifted from the importer is worse than no template.
Why no MAC address or installed-software column?
Because you cannot maintain them by hand. Fields that change without anyone touching the file become confidently wrong within a quarter, and a wrong register is more dangerous than a missing column.
This template is also the import format
Fill it in, and it loads straight into a workspace with column mapping, a row-by-row error preview and a rollback if you do not like the result.