I have to do something similar. I moved from film/theatre to an art dept in a uni and found "asset tiger" which is free. There are expensive items and Amazon £10 ones. There are expensive tracking database systems as well but at a ridiculous cost As most of my stuff is now in an excel spreadsheet, I set up an asset tiger test, you create a "card" for each item, importing from excel.I have only done phantom tests, i.e. "Lending" an item in a virtual sense, but it emails me when an item is overdue. So far I have only relied on random allocated three digit numbers to id equipment but could switch to barcodes As I say, not tried in anger but worth looking at https://www.myassettag.com/assettiger/