Barcode-Based Inventory Management

[ERM64bit]

So I've been working on reorganizing and restructuring my inventory management system at work for all of our IT equipment, and it is turning into a nightmare. Ideally, I'd love to have a barcode scanner where I can print off barcodes and assign them to individual assets, and also place them on shared equipment so that users can check out equipment and I can keep track of who was the last person in our department to use it. Now granted, our IT department isn't huge, and I'm looking at about 500-700 total assets. Right now they have physical asset tags with a number, and I have to search that item based on that number in an Excel sheet. I'd really like it if I could have everything in a SQL database or something similar where I can add detailed descriptions of some of our more complex assets (like install date, last service, item specifications, etc), such as our desktops and servers. I was wondering if anyone knew or had experience with any low cost options so that I could better organize my system.