Nearly thirty years of labelling experience, shared in one place…
Expert Advice
Nearly thirty years of manufacturing asset labels, asset tags, and graphic overlays has given us a clear view of what works, what fails, and why.
We’ve worked with everyone from single-site small businesses managing a handful of laptops to large multi-site organisations tracking thousands of assets across complex estates. The industries span manufacturing, healthcare, education, facilities management, and logistics. But the questions are almost always the same, and so are the mistakes. This guide is our way of helping you understand what really matters when buying your labels, the issues that are frequently overlooked, and the advice we find ourselves giving again and again. We will start with the foundations in this
first guide.
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by Advice Section
Why label your assets?
What “asset” actually means
What counts as a “label-able” asset
What an asset label is, and what it isn’t
Label vs tag — and why it matters
Terminology
The label is what makes the record real
Structuring your asset IDs
why, what, label-able and label vs tag
Why label your assets?
No matter how you choose to order, our process is built for speed, accuracy, and transparency. After placing your order online or through our sales team, you’ll know exactly what to expect at each stage from confirmation and design approval to invoicing, production, and delivery.
Ordering Online
- Place Your Order – Pick your labels, size, quantity, design your label using our basic or advanced designer tools (see further details below), add to basket and fill out your details in checkout.
- Confirmation Email – We’ll send you an email with all the order details for peace of mind.
- Design Approval – To ensure your design, variable data, and codes are correct, our design team creates a scaled approval form for you to review and approve via the Signable system, which will be sent to you by email.
- Invoice & Production – Once approved, we’ll issue your final invoice and start production.
- Dispatch & Tracking – Your labels are on their way! We’ll email you DPD tracking so you can follow your delivery.
Ordering via Our Sales Team
- Talk to Us – Send us your enquiry and we’ll provide a quote.
- Design Approval – Our design team will prepare a scaled approval form for you, just like online orders.
- Invoice & Production – Approve the design, we issue your invoice, and production begins.
- Dispatch & Tracking – Receive an email with DPD tracking once your labels are dispatched.
However you choose to order, we make sure your labels are accurate, approved, and delivered efficiently.
Effective organisations are generally quite good at keeping records. What they’re less good at is connecting those records to the physical things they own. Items get moved. Equipment goes on loan and never comes back. Essential maintenance gets forgotten. Staff leave and take institutional knowledge with them.
An asset label bridges that gap. It’s a physical link between an item and its record, the first step toward an estate you can actually account for, and a foundation for digitisation and efficiency improvement.
What “asset” actually means
This word gets used loosely, and the resulting confusion causes real problems, particularly when finance, IT, and operations are all working from different assumptions.
In everyday business language, an asset is anything of value that an organisation owns or controls. Assets represent resources that may provide future financial benefit to the business. But this general definition covers three meaningfully different things:
- Fixed assets (accounting) — items that are capitalised on the business’s financial balance sheet, depreciated over time, and reported in the company’s accounts. Think machinery, vehicles, and office fit-out. These are the big, important assets your auditors, accountants, and HMRC care about, and they often form the infrastructure of your ability to do business.
- Physical assets (operational) — the broader category of anything you’d want to locate, maintain, or replace during normal operations. This includes many items that may be below your capitalisation threshold but are still essential to getting your work done: a laptop, a projector, a power tool. You can’t run the business without knowing where these are, and what condition they’re in, even if they never appear on the formal balance sheet.
- Information assets (GDPR) — records of data rather than physical objects: customer databases, HR files, contracts. These sit in a separate register entirely, and are typically owned by the Data Protection Officer, or equivalent. Because they are intangible in nature, they require specialist digital tracking.
This guide is primarily about physical assets (the things you can pick up, move, misplace, or have stolen), although there can be an even stronger case for labelling and monitoring your more expensive fixed assets.
What counts as a “label-able” asset
If an item has a useful life measured in years rather than days, is worth recovering if lost, and would cause disruption if unaccounted for, it probably warrants an asset label. Common categories include:
- IT equipment: laptops, monitors, tablets, servers, peripherals
- AV and communications: projectors, screens, phones, cameras
- Office furniture and equipment: desks, chairs, whiteboards, particularly worth tagging for larger estates or multi-site organisations
- Tools and portable equipment: power tools, testing instruments, survey equipment
- Plant and machinery: plant and machinery: manufacturing equipment, compressors, forklifts, vehicles
- Laboratory and medical equipment: instruments requiring calibration or statutory inspection
- Other commercial equipment: catering equipment, display equipment, security equipment
- Safety equipment: fire extinguishers, AEDs, breathing apparatus, often subject to mandatory inspection schedules
- Infrastructure: fixed signage, utility equipment, access control hardware
Stock and inventory are a special case. Inventory can be just as important to keep track of for a business as other assets, but it has a relatively short lifespan compared with fixed, long-life assets. Many businesses do choose to label inventory, but with lower durability requirements than labels applied to assets intended for use over many years. They also tend to use specialised inventory management software, rather than a standard asset register.
What an asset label is, and what it isn’t
This is worth saying clearly because it’s a distinction that’s frequently blurred.
An asset label is a durable physical link between an item and a record. It is not the record itself. The record lives in a register or asset management system; the label’s sole job is to make the item identifiable quickly, repeatedly, and over its full useful life.
Without that physical anchor, records and items drift apart. Items get moved, reassigned, renamed, or quietly taken home. A register without labels is, over time, a register of things that used to be there.
Label vs tag — and why it matters
These terms are used interchangeably in the labelling industry all the time. We believe they shouldn’t be.
While all asset tags are typically a type of label, not all labels are tags. The key difference is that tags are more durable. We’d summarise it as follows:
- Asset labels are typically thinner and flexible, often made from polyester, vinyl, or laminated film (more on each of these materials later). Designed for internal environments where the priority is reliable identification and, where required, tamper evidence. Labels are typically manufactured to be self-adhesive, often called “pressure-sensitive.”
- Asset tags are thicker and semi-rigid, made from laminated polyester, polycarbonate, or anodised aluminium, all much more durable materials. Engineered for external or high-wear applications where the tag must survive some combination of UV exposure, chemical contact, abrasion, or physical impact over many years. Typically applied to plant machinery, in an outdoor enclosure, or to industrial equipment. Asset tags are often manufactured to be self-adhesive too, although you may choose to secure thicker metal tags by requesting screw holes.
The choice isn’t about cost. It’s about whether the label will still be there, and still be readable, at year five or year ten.
Word of caution: We advise readers of this guide to probe claims of label and tag durability made by any manufacturer or label reseller they’re considering buying from. In our experience, time-poor customers can often be misled by grand claims of durability and quality. Relatively thin labels can be mischaracterised as durable tags by well-known label sellers of scale, so check the thickness and lamination specs.
Choosing the right label or tag materials for your use case is essential to achieving the durability required. If appropriately specified, labels and tags should remain readable and intact for the working life of the asset to which they’re applied. We provide more detail on materials and characteristics later in this guide series.
Getting the specification right for your intended use is equally critical — matching the label to its environment, including temperature range, internal or external use, surface preparation, and cleaning chemicals. Correct application matters just as much once you have the right label. See our guide at customlabels.co.uk/how-to-apply-your-label for practical guidance on both.
terminology, records and asset IDs
Getting the Language and Data Right
No matter how you choose to order, our process is built for speed, accuracy, and transparency. After placing your order online or through our sales team, you’ll know exactly what to expect at each stage from confirmation and design approval to invoicing, production, and delivery.
Ordering Online
- Place Your Order – Pick your labels, size, quantity, design your label using our basic or advanced designer tools (see further details below), add to basket and fill out your details in checkout.
- Confirmation Email – We’ll send you an email with all the order details for peace of mind.
- Design Approval – To ensure your design, variable data, and codes are correct, our design team creates a scaled approval form for you to review and approve via the Signable system, which will be sent to you by email.
- Invoice & Production – Once approved, we’ll issue your final invoice and start production.
- Dispatch & Tracking – Your labels are on their way! We’ll email you DPD tracking so you can follow your delivery.
Ordering via Our Sales Team
- Talk to Us – Send us your enquiry and we’ll provide a quote.
- Design Approval – Our design team will prepare a scaled approval form for you, just like online orders.
- Invoice & Production – Approve the design, we issue your invoice, and production begins.
- Dispatch & Tracking – Receive an email with DPD tracking once your labels are dispatched.
However you choose to order, we make sure your labels are accurate, approved, and delivered efficiently.
Terminology
- Substrate — the material the label is made from (vinyl, polyester, polycarbonate, etc.). The substrate largely determines durability.
- Adhesive — the bonding layer. Different adhesives are formulated for different surfaces, temperature ranges, and removal requirements. The right adhesive for a powder-coated steel cabinet is not the right adhesive for a polyethylene box. For our most demanding applications, we use premium 3M adhesives on our Ultimate (Max and Standard) range tags; our UltraTuff asset tags use a Fasson® general-purpose adhesive suited to the broadest range of everyday surfaces. It’s worth noting that some suppliers use unbranded, general-purpose adhesives while making strong claims about bond strength. Named, engineered premium adhesives such as those from 3M are formulated for specific surface types (3M 467, for example, is optimised for smooth surfaces; 468 for slightly textured ones), which means you’re buying both a higher-quality adhesive and one matched to your application.
- It’s also worth noting that adhesives require time to cure to full strength after application — ideally a minimum of 48–72 hours, though bond strength continues to increase beyond that. Whatever the adhesive, its bond will only be as good as the application: testing or stressing a label too soon after applying it is one of the most common causes of premature failure. See our application guide at customlabels.co.uk/how-to-apply-your-label for guidance on surface preparation and curing.
- Lamination — a clear film applied over the printed surface. This adds scratch and chemical resistance, and is a practical step up in durability from unlaminated labels and tags for most indoor environments. Note that this is not the same as under-surface printing, discussed below, which is much more resilient. Laminated labels and tags can be incredibly useful in adding a cost-effective improvement in durability. However, there are a number of risks to be alert to when considering if this solution is right for you:
- There remains a small but growing potential for delamination over time, which can be caused by a combination of manufacturing fault, materials defects, the external environment the label is exposed to, and the inherent nature of its construction method. High-quality manufacturing techniques reduce this risk.
- They tend to have lower abrasion resistance compared to under-surface print methods and materials, due to the quality and thickness of the laminate material. This is typically a protective but relatively thin polyester, which is less durable than polycarbonate.
- Beware prolonged and intense exposure to chemicals (long-term exposure, or near-submersion), as these substances can eventually seep into the laminated label layers. This is much less of a concern with an under-surface printed tag.
- Beware mixed materials used in manufacturing your laminated label. Vinyl laminate, for instance, can shrink over time when applied to polyester substrates, increasing the risk of delamination.
- Under-surface / sub-surface printing — the ink is applied to the underside of a clear substrate, with the adhesive behind it. The substrate itself becomes the protective layer. Because the print is never exposed to the outside world, it cannot as easily be abraded, chemically attacked, or picked off. This represents a step up from simple lamination, which can ultimately experience delamination failure, exposing the ink to abrasion. Under-surface printing is the most durable method for plastics-based labels, and we advise you to consider this type of product should you require significant durability. It’s worth scrutinising durability claims from any supplier, including us — the construction method matters more than the marketing language around it. Our Ultimate/Ultimate Max Asset Tag range and UltraTuff both use under-surface printing, with the Ultimate range available in gloss and velvet polycarbonate finishes.
- Tamper-evident / VOID labels — designed to show visible signs of interference if removal is attempted. When peeled away, they leave a deliberate VOID pattern on the underlying surface, signalling that the label has been disturbed. The main part of the label cannot then be reapplied or repurposed onto another product, reducing the risk of counterfeiting. We offer both mini and large VOID vinyl options to suit different asset sizes and applications.
- Tamper-proof / destructible — the substrate physically fragments if removal is attempted, making it impossible to transfer the label intact to another item. Our destructible labels are made from Ultra Destruct Vinyl, which hardens to provide a label that fragments on attempted removal, with UV, abrasion, and medium chemical resistance. This is ideal for high-value IT equipment, where theft may be attempted and the perpetrator wants to remove all proof of who owns the device.
- Variable data — any information that changes from one label to the next: serial numbers, asset IDs, QR code content, sequential barcodes. Variable data is supplied by the customer and printed individually per label. This is one of the most critical elements of any asset monitoring system; great labels with the wrong data are useless. Without appropriate quality control checks and developed processes to manage variable data, mistakes can easily occur. The more complicated your data requirements, the more important it is that you have confidence in the controls your provider has in place.
- Equally, it pays to work with a supplier who maintains reliable records of your previous number history. We do this as standard, but we still advise customers to keep their own records too. This matters particularly where multiple people within the same organisation are placing orders, or where labels have been sourced from more than one supplier over time. Without that oversight at both ends, duplicate or conflicting ID ranges are an easy and costly mistake to make.
The label is what makes the record real
In simple terms, asset labelling follows three steps: apply the label to the item; record its details, description, serial number, location, owner, acquisition date, cost against that label’s unique identifier in your asset register. Your asset register could range from something as basic as a spreadsheet, perfectly adequate for smaller, single-site estates, to dedicated asset management software for larger or more complex ones. From that point, every audit, maintenance check, insurance claim, or disposal refers back to that same record.
Structuring your asset IDs
A purely sequential number (0001, 0002, 0003) is simple, but it carries no meaning to the person reading it. A structured ID does. Using a prefix to encode location, department, or asset category means the label itself communicates something useful at a glance, without needing to open a database. Avoid any gaps in variable data too, especially when running a data set across various locations — this can cause mass confusion in the long term.
For example, a label reading MAN-IT-0142 immediately tells you this is the 142nd IT asset registered at the Manchester site. BRI-FAC-0031 places itself in Facilities at Bristol. This approach scales well across multi-site or multi-department organisations, where a flat number sequence quickly loses meaning.
One practical caution: only encode information that is stable. Site codes and asset categories are usually permanent enough to include. Department names and user names are not, they belong in the register record, not the ID, where they can be updated without touching the label.