These Can Be Your Early-Warning Alarms for a Broken Fixed Assets Process
When your fixed assets process is broken, your business breaks down too. You might overpay for taxes and insurance. Your capital budgets may become unusable. If the problem goes on too long, you may end up with inaccurate balance sheets. This can result in costly noncompliance penalties.
No one wants their company to be in this situation. Luckily, you now have a way to avoid it.
Learn more in “Best Practices for Fixed Asset Managers.”
Do You Have a Broken Fixed Assets Process?
If you recognize any of the 7 telltale signs below, contact the fixed asset experts at Paragon. Our team can help you fix these issues at once.
- You have “ghost assets.” These are the lost, stolen, or unusable assets that are still listed as active in your system.
- You do not remember the last time you conducted a physical fixed asset inventory. With the right setup in place, this can be a painless process – really!
- You have trouble distinguishing identical assets. Companies often buy multiples of the same item. Using unique barcodes helps make this process easier.
- Your asset labels fall off or fade, or you break barcode scanners. Assets stored outside of a comfortable office environment need to be tracked with durable barcodes and handheld scanners. These should be well-suited to their environments.
- You are performing duplicate data entry. Planning, tracking, and depreciation should not be totally separate processes. Duplicate data entry leads to costly mistakes.
- You use spreadsheets to manage fixed assets. This drowns you in a sea of versions and potential formula errors. It also makes it hard to see which assets qualify for emerging tax advantages.
- Your fixed asset data does not integrate with other company data. Have you integrated fixed asset data into your financial software? If not, your reporting process is much harder than it needs to be.
Why Better Fixed Asset Management Matters
Not sure if it’s time to focus on your fixed asset management? Consider these 3 facts:
- Fixed assets can account for 30-50% of a company’s total assets.
- Inaccurate reporting can leave CFOs personally responsible for the errors.
- Few companies have full insight into their fixed asset numbers.
If you recognize any of the signs above, they should be early-warning alarms for you. These signs show that it is time to give fixed asset management a larger part of your attention.
Good news: It does not have to take a lot of time to follow best practices for fixed asset management.
A Better System Pays Off
It is easy to forget about fixed asset management. After all, there are so many other, more urgent business matters every day. However, it does pay off to have a solid fixed asset management system in place.
A working system creates a positive impact on your company’s productivity. It often improves budgeting and cash flow. Best of all, it can improve accuracy in your balance sheet. This helps you secure financing in a tightened lending landscape – which can be crucial for long-term business success.
Learn more in “Best Practices for Fixed Asset Managers”
Serving clients since 1985, Paragon International, Inc. provides independent, impartial and accurate cost segregation analyses, and property valuations and appraisals to assist in and support decisions related to taxes, risk management, investment, financing and corporate planning. Our consultants have extensive fixed asset experience – they’re fixed asset experts. Because of that we are able to offer a unique combination of irreplaceable human resources and advanced technology. We have specialists experienced in valuing closely-held securities, patents and other intangible assets, business enterprises, buildings, equipment and real estate. In addition, Paragon provides complete inventory and asset management services and solutions, including software customization and training, barcode labels and scanners, and tailored inventory services such as data conversion and integration, asset inventories, asset policies, cost reconciliation, and appraisal services. Contact Paragon International to discover how we can help you.
