Fixed schedule
- Simplest rule to build and test
- Spends battery while the asset sits still
- Fits assets that must check in daily for an audit
Asset Tracking
Asset tracking software development
Returnable containers, tools, trailers and site equipment move between yards, customers and crews, and nobody can say where each one is. Agnotic Technologies builds asset tracking software that picks the right tag for every asset and turns its reads into custody records your ERP trusts.
Tag technology per assetBattery-aware reportingGeofences and custodyERP and CMMS sync
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Asset tracking
What is asset tracking software?
Asset tracking software records where each movable asset is, who has it and what happened to it, from tag reads sent over GNSS, cellular, LoRaWAN, Bluetooth or RFID. Agnotic Technologies builds asset tracking software for returnable containers, tools, trailers and equipment, matched to each asset's tag and synced with your ERP or maintenance system.
Most asset tracking projects go wrong at the tag, not in the software. A trailer parked outdoors for weeks, a tool crate in a steel shed and a reusable tote on a conveyor need different radios, batteries and reporting rules.
This page covers mobile and outdoor assets. Indoor equipment tracking in hospitals, vehicle telematics and stock positions in a warehouse each have their own page, linked at the end.
Decision table
Which tracking technology fits each asset?
The table we start every asset tracking project with. Range and accuracy are classes, not promises: buildings, metal and weather change them, so we test tags on your site before choosing.
| Technology | Range | Location accuracy class | Power | Infrastructure needed | Best-fit asset |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GNSS with LTE-M or NB-IoT | Anywhere with cellular coverage | Meters outdoors, weak indoors | Battery; each GNSS fix costs the most energy | None of your own, but a cellular plan per tag | Trailers, containers and equipment that leave your sites |
| LoRaWAN | Long range per gateway, shorter in dense buildings | Gateway or zone level, finer when the tag also has GNSS | Battery, low duty cycle | Your own gateways or a network operator | Assets that stay inside a yard, campus or region |
| Bluetooth LE beacons | Room or aisle scale | Zone level, finer with direction finding locators | Coin cell or small battery | Fixed gateways, locators or phones | Tools, carts and totes inside buildings |
| UHF RFID (EPC Gen2) | At a reader or portal | Presence at a read point | Passive tags need no battery | Fixed portals or handheld readers | High volumes of low-cost items passing dock doors and gates |
| UWB | Inside a grid of anchors | Sub-meter class | Battery, higher draw than Bluetooth LE | A dense anchor grid | High-value assets where the exact spot matters |
| Barcode or QR | Line of sight to a scanner | Last scan point only | None | Scanners or phones | Low-value assets checked in and out by people |
Many assets carry two technologies, such as a GNSS tracker for the road and an RFID or Bluetooth tag for the yard. The data model handles both on one asset.
Battery and reporting
How often should a tag report, and what does it cost in battery?
Every report spends battery. We set reporting rules per asset type, so a tag talks when something changes rather than on a fixed clock.
Motion triggered
- An accelerometer wakes the tag when the asset moves
- Frequent reports in transit, rare reports when parked
- A heartbeat so a silent tag is not mistaken for a parked one
Event triggered
- Reports on geofence entry or exit, shock, tilt or temperature
- Keeps network traffic low until something happens
- Rules run on the tag or at the gateway
Read point
- Passive RFID tags and barcodes report only when they pass a reader
- No battery to manage
- Location is only as good as the layout of read points
Event flow
How does a custody event travel from the tag to the ERP?
One returnable container leaving your depot, step by step.
Tag report
A gateway, reader or cellular network receives the tag's report with its identifier, time and position or read point.
Normalize
The platform maps the tag to its asset, turns the position into a site or zone, and drops duplicate reads from overlapping readers.
Apply rules
Geofence, dwell and route rules decide whether the read is an event: left the depot, arrived at a customer, parked too long.
Record custody
The event names who holds the asset now and the document behind it, such as a delivery note or a rental order.
Sync
The event posts to the ERP or maintenance system against the asset record, with retries when that system is unavailable.
Act on exceptions
Overdue returns, missing assets and repeated damage open tasks for the team that owns them.
Data model
What data model sits behind asset tracking?
Keep the asset, the tag and the event apart, and tags can be swapped, reused or doubled up without losing any history.
Asset
- Your asset ID, type and status
- GS1 GRAI for returnable assets or GIAI for individual ones, where you use them
- Link to the ERP or CMMS record
Tag
- Tag ID, technology and firmware
- Battery level and last heartbeat
- History of the assets it was paired with
Read
- Raw report from the gateway, reader or network
- Time stamp, position or read point
- Kept for a short period for troubleshooting
Location event
- Site, zone or geofence entered or left
- Dwell start and end
- Confidence of the position
Custody event
- Who holds the asset and since when
- Source document, such as a rental order
- Scan or signature that confirmed the handover
What do we build into asset tracking software?
Modules we scope one by one, so a first release can cover one asset type and still keep a clean history for every asset added later.
Tag and gateway ingestion
Connectors for cellular trackers, LoRaWAN network servers, Bluetooth gateways and RFID readers, with each vendor's payload decoded into one read format.
Asset registry and tagging app
Assets, tags and the pairing between them, with a phone app for bulk tagging when a pool of containers is first labelled.
Geofences and zones
Depots, customer sites and yard zones drawn on a map, with entry, exit and dwell rules per asset type.
Custody and handover
Check-out and check-in by scan or signature, so the system knows who is responsible for each asset at every step.
Battery and device health
Battery forecasts from real reporting, missed heartbeats and firmware versions, so tags are replaced before they go silent.
ERP and CMMS sync
Location and custody events posted to the ERP for rentals and billing, and to the CMMS for inspections and maintenance.
Exception queues
Overdue returns, assets outside any known site and tags that stopped reporting, each routed to an owner.
Search and history
Where an asset is now, where it has been and who had it, with a full trail for audits and disputes.
Who it is for
Who do we build asset tracking software for?
Teams whose assets leave the building and need to come back.
Returnable packaging pools
Owners of crates, totes, kegs, pallets and racks who need to know which customer holds each one and when it is due back.
Equipment rental companies
Trailers, generators and site equipment followed from yard to job site, with custody tied to the rental contract.
Construction and field contractors
Tools and equipment shared across crews and sites, checked out by scan and found again when a job ends.
Manufacturers with travelling fixtures
Racks, molds and fixtures that go to suppliers and come back, with every trip on record.
Standards
Which standards does asset tracking software work with?
GS1 GRAI and GIAIEPC UHF Gen2LoRaWANLTE-M and NB-IoTBluetooth LEMQTT
Facts and sources
Facts behind asset tracking software
Standards the technology table and the data model are built on, each linked to its primary source.
GS1 Application Identifier 8003 carries the Global Returnable Asset Identifier (GRAI): 14 digits including a check digit, with an optional serial component of up to 16 characters. Application Identifier 8004 carries the Global Individual Asset Identifier (GIAI) of up to 30 characters.
Source: GS1 Application Identifiers, AI 8003 and 8004 (GS1)The LoRa Alliance describes LoRaWAN as a low power, wide area networking specification for battery-operated devices that operates in unlicensed radio bands and uses a star-of-stars topology, in which gateways relay messages between end devices and a central network server.
Source: What is LoRaWAN (LoRa Alliance)3GPP completed the standardization of NB-IoT, a narrowband radio technology for the Internet of Things, in June 2016 as part of Release 13, which also brought eMTC and EC-GSM-IoT for IoT devices.
Source: Standardization of NB-IoT completed (3GPP)Bluetooth Direction Finding uses two methods, Angle of Arrival (AoA) and Angle of Departure (AoD). In AoA, an asset tag transmits from a single antenna and a fixed locator with an antenna array calculates the direction of the signal.
Source: Bluetooth Direction Finding (Bluetooth SIG)
Scope and cost
What drives the cost of asset tracking software?
We do not publish prices or hardware quotes. These are the things that change the size of a build, and we price them on the scoping call.
Asset types and tags
How many asset types you track, and how many tag technologies and vendors that brings in.
Network
Your own gateways, a network operator or cellular plans, and whether assets roam across countries.
Fleet size and read volume
How many tags report, how often, and how long raw reads must be kept.
Connected systems
The ERP, CMMS, WMS or rental system each event posts to.
Mobile apps
Tagging, check-out and search apps for field and yard teams.
Site testing
How many sites we test tags at before the main build, and in what conditions.
Engagement
How does an asset tracking engagement work?
We test the tags before we build the platform around them.
1.
Scoping call
We list your asset types, where they travel, the tags you have and the systems that need location and custody events.
Scope2.
Site test and first release
Candidate tags are tested at one of your sites, then we build ingestion, geofences, custody and one system sync for that asset type.
Build3.
Scale and support
More asset types, sites and connectors, plus monitoring of tag health after launch.
ScaleFrequently Asked Questions
For assets that leave your sites, a GNSS tracker that reports over LTE-M or NB-IoT is usually the starting point. For assets that stay inside a yard or campus, LoRaWAN gateways can cover the area at a lower running cost. We test both on your site before deciding.
It depends on how often the tag reports, how often it takes a GNSS fix and the temperatures it lives in. We set motion and event rules so tags report when something changes, and the software forecasts battery from real use so tags are replaced before they go silent.
Usually, yes. We write a connector for each tag vendor or network server and decode every payload into one read format, so a mixed fleet runs in one system. We check each vendor's interface during scoping.
Vehicle tracking with driver behavior, fuel and engine data is a separate product, covered on our fleet telematics platform page. This software covers the trailers, containers and equipment that vehicles carry or leave behind.
Location and custody events post to the asset or rental record in the ERP and to the CMMS for inspections and maintenance, through their APIs or integration tools, with retries and a log of every posting.
Yes. A phone app can scan barcodes and QR codes, read NFC and Bluetooth tags, and record check-out and check-in with the user's identity and location.
We agree a fixed first release on the scoping call. The site tests of candidate tags and the number of systems that need events decide most of the schedule.