No two businesses track exactly the same things, yet most off-the-shelf systems hand you a fixed set of boxes and expect you to bend around them. Custom fields remove that ceiling — extend Asset Giant with the exact information your business cares about, so the system fits the way you work.
Define them once, in Settings
You set your custom fields up in one place — Settings — and from then on they appear automatically on every asset, ready to be filled in. There’s no form to redesign and nothing to repeat per item; define a field once and it simply becomes part of the standard asset profile.
When you create a field you pick the right type for it, which keeps the data clean and makes it properly searchable later:
- Text — references such as a PO number, a shelf location or an internal code.
- Number — values like a daily hire rate, a weight or a count.
- Date — anything that matters on a timeline, such as a next-service or PAT test date.
- Link (URL) — a manufacturer’s page, an online manual or a supplier listing.
- Yes / No — simple flags like “requires calibration” or “loanable to clients”.
Examples from a range of trades
The fields that matter vary enormously from one business to the next — that’s exactly the point. A few that earn their place in different industries:
| Industry | Custom fields worth adding |
|---|---|
| Construction & trades | PAT test date, next service date, shelf / bay location, supplier PO number |
| Tool & plant hire | Daily hire rate, current hirer, deposit held, service-due (engine hours) |
| Electrical & mechanical | Calibration due, test-certificate link, voltage / load rating, “requires PAT” flag |
| IT, AV & media production | Internal asset tag, warranty expiry, firmware version, assigned client |
| Catering & events | Food-safety check date, portable-appliance test, “loanable to clients” flag, kit contents |
| Healthcare, dental & labs | Calibration / sterilisation date, regulatory class, service-contract URL, last-validated date |
The pattern is always the same: take the detail you currently keep in your head, on a label, or in a side spreadsheet, and give it a proper home on the asset itself.
Fields you can actually search and report on
The real power of custom fields is that they’re not just storage — they’re fully searchable. Because each field has a proper type, you can build precise filters and surface exactly the assets that need attention. For example:
- List every item whose PAT test date falls before the end of the month, so nothing slips through.
- Pull up everything tagged with a particular PO number for a job you’re reconciling.
- Show all equipment flagged as requiring calibration ahead of a scheduled round.
This effectively gives you lightweight, business-specific reporting without any report-building — covered in more depth under Using the Inventory Filters.
Best Practice: Resist the urge to add a field for everything at once. Start with the two or three pieces of information you already wish you were tracking, get used to filtering on them, and add more only when a genuine need appears.
To set them up, see Creating and Deleting Custom Fields.