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Habitia Help

Tracking assets

An asset in Habitia is a physical thing attached to a property or unit — the refrigerator, the AC condenser, the water heater, the front door. Logging each one lets Habitia track its repair history, warn you before the warranty lapses, and feed the end-of-life signals you tuned in Lifecycle rules.

Open Assets in the left sidebar, or the Assets tab on a property’s detail page.

1. Click Add asset

From the global Assets page, click Add asset in the top-right. From a property’s Assets tab, the button is in the same spot but already locked to that property.

2. Where the asset lives

The first four fields anchor the asset to a location:

  • Property (required) — which property it belongs to.
  • Unit (optional) — which unit it’s in. Leave blank for property-level assets (whole-building water heater, the elevator, the roof).
  • Room (optional) — which room. Only available once you’ve picked a unit.
  • Part of system (optional) — link to a parent asset. Used when a major system has separate components (e.g., a central AC counts as one parent asset, with the condenser, air handler, and ducts as child assets).

3. Category and identity

  • Category (required) — HVAC, Appliance, Plumbing, Electrical, Safety device, Structural, Exterior, Interior, Window, Door, Lock, Cabinet, Countertop, Fixture, Flooring, Wall covering, Ceiling, Other.
  • Subcategory (optional) — free-text. “Refrigerator” or “Water heater” or “Smoke detector” lets you search later.
  • Name (required) — what shows in lists. “Kitchen fridge”, “Master bath water heater”, “Front door lock”.

4. Manufacturer info and dates

Tip: Skip the typing — click Scan nameplate at the top of the form, photograph the manufacturer’s plate (the sticker with the model and serial), and Habitia fills in brand, model, serial number, a category guess and the manufacture date for you to confirm. It reads the barcode and the printed text on your own server; no AI service is involved and the photo is only kept if you leave it attached. Each suggested field is marked exact (barcode), read (text) or guess (inferred). A straight-on, well-lit, close shot reads best.

  • Brand — the manufacturer (Samsung, Carrier, etc.).
  • Model — the model number from the spec sticker.
  • Serial number — useful for warranty claims.
  • Install date — when the asset was installed. Drives the age signal in Lifecycle rules. The nameplate scan offers the manufacture date here as an estimate.
  • Purchase cost ($) and Installation cost ($) — what you paid. Used as the replacement cost when you haven’t entered one.
  • Estimated replacement cost ($) — what a new one would cost today. Drives the replacement forecast and the repair-vs-replace signal. Leave blank to fall back to purchase + installation, or to the category default.
  • Expected life (months) — overrides the category default. Leave blank to use the lifecycle rules default.
  • Warranty expiration — Habitia raises an alert before this lapses.

5. Condition and status

  • Condition — Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor. Subjective; useful for prioritizing replacements.
  • Status — Active (default), Needs service, Out of service, Replaced, Removed.

6. Save

Click Save asset. It shows up in the property’s Assets tab and on the unit detail page.

Screenshot: Assets tab on a property with the asset grid

How assets feed the rest of Habitia

  • Work orders can link to a specific asset. Every work order against an asset becomes part of its repair history — feeding the “repeat failures” trigger in lifecycle rules.
  • Tenant maintenance requests can name an asset (“The fridge isn’t cooling”). Habitia pre-populates the asset list from the tenant’s unit.
  • Smart alerts raises asset alerts when the asset passes its expected life, recent repairs approach replacement cost, its condition is recorded as failed, or it hits the repeat-repair count — see Reading an asset’s lifecycle.
  • Replacement forecast on the dashboard and in Reports projects replacement costs and a monthly reserve from your active assets.
  • Bulk import has an assets CSV template for importing an existing portfolio in one shot — see Bulk import.

Parent / child systems

Use the Part of system field when you have a big-ticket system made of replaceable parts. Example:

  • Parent: Central HVAC (the whole system, with the install date and warranty).
  • Children: Condenser unit, Air handler, Ductwork — each its own asset with its own brand/model/serial.

Repairs on a child roll up to the parent’s history. End-of-life on a child doesn’t kill the parent — you can replace one component without retiring the whole system.

What’s next

  • Scheduled services — recurring maintenance tied to assets (quarterly HVAC service, annual termite, etc.).
  • Lifecycle rules — the per-category defaults that drive asset end-of-life alerts.