Why maintain a fixed asset register

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Keeping these cookies enables us to display advertisements that are more relevant to you and your interests. More information about our Cookie Policy. Skip to content. What is a fixed asset register? Items and information captured in a fixed asset register Fixed assets are longer term investments which provide value to a business and are depreciated over a period of years.

Examples of fixed assets. It not only helps keep track of the value of its fixed assets, but it can also help a business to understand its overall value from fixed assets such as land, building, vehicles etc it owns. By Marketing. By Jennifer Bramley.

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What is a Fixed Asset Register? What is a fixed asset? In addition, your IT asset register will accurately show which assets are in use and which are available and your business keeps the benefits of less asset downtime and optimised asset usage.

This is where the benefits of a fixed asset register develop from the assets themselves and become better integrated with your finances. Running a business comes with a lot of bureaucracy, of course, and a fixed asset register will help with all of this, too.

Using a fixed asset register to track and maintain information pertaining to all of your fixed assets allows you to streamline insurance and tax proceedings. Ghost assets and zombie assets will prevent you from reaping the full rewards of tax reliefs, and could also create fines for your business. Accounting for all of your fixed assets prevents this.

Fixed asset registers are also perfect to prove ownership and responsible use of your fixed assets. Whereas larger companies, depending on the industry, are likely to have up to three different types of asset registers that include their IT and digital assets.

In this instance, the asset data that is stored will vary depending on the register. The next step is to carry out a physical audit of assets.

Physical audits can be easier if businesses have tagged their assets with barcodes or RFID tags. After the audit, they can compare the list of assets from their accounting or asset management system with the physically audited assets. Inevitably, businesses are likely to find a difference between the audited assets and their list of assets. Missing assets are technically termed ghost assets, which are typically written-off. Once a company has created a master fixed asset register, keeping it updated and accurate can be challenging.

Particularly if assets are constantly moving across multiple locations. Most companies will tag their assets with tracking labels so that they can track movement in real-time. Quite often companies rely on spreadsheets to manage their asset register. Whilst spreadsheets can be easy to use, they are not designed to maintain the accuracy of an asset register. Most information related to an asset is dynamic.