Keeping track of your assets when you are a large business, such as a university with several campuses or a company with far-flung offices can be a genuine challenge. Realistically, you cannot assign more than one or two people to take stock of all of your assets and even this could take weeks or months resulting in a costly venture.
Whereas in the past, manual tracking and stocktaking was the only option, there are now programs designed to facilitate and streamline the monitoring, verification and management of fixed assets. Strong asset register software supplemented with the idu Assets Module should be able to accommodate multiple companies, asset books, cost centre and asset hierarchies, making this process a non-issue for your company.
A few simple extras can make the world of difference to how you manage your asset register, so be sure to look out for the following automated options with your software…
The cost centre manager should be notified of new assets that have been assigned to them. Selecting the new asset view should allow the cost centre manager to allocate it to a location and a person responsible
There should be a function that enables users to perform asset verification aimed at physically verifying the company’s assets on a periodic cycle. If assets have not been verified, it should send users an overdue asset verification reminder, noting whether it is current, 30 days, 60 days or 90 days overdue.
Existing assets should be displayed by asset group, clearly showing the asset cost, accumulated depreciation and book value. Selecting an asset group should display the assets within the group and the relevant information pertaining to the asset.
There should be an asset disposal option, allowing the user to dispose of an asset giving a reason and any additional comments. Once the submit button has been hit, the administrator should be automatically notified of the disposal.
If an asset is transferred internally, between branches for example, the cost centre receiving the asset transfer should be required to accept or reject this inward transfer. When logging on to the application the user should be notified that an asset has been transferred and that it needs to be accepted or rejected, and the cost centre that originated the transfer should be notified of the result.
You should be able to view detailed asset information, either by an asset view or cost centre at various levels within the cost centre structure dependent on user access. The summarised asset details should be displayed in the selected structures and by drilling down through the structure, the user should be able to see cost and depreciation figures at the various levels for a selected period.
The system should also go a long way to automating the reconciliation of assets from budgeted CAPEX to actual spend and support a many to many reconciliation environment.
There are a number of reasons you might need to track your assets from allowing the cost of the asset to be spread over its “working life”, to meeting Financial Regulation requirements, to providing details such as their location and who the responsible person for it is or even simply for insurance purposes.
But with advanced technology that is easy to use and navigate, this should not be a chore for you or your staff; the people responsible for each asset should keep the system up to date and your administrator should simply be notified if anything changes, ensuring your asset register is always current and ready for review.