Assets & Maintenance

The Asset Register

The register is the list of what the business owns and cares about — plant, vehicles, IT equipment, tooling, fixtures.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → ERP - Operations:

• Asset Register — the console — the register and its current position
• Assets — the underlying records

Architect Panel → Data:

• Record Numbering — the scheme that allocates asset numbers

What an asset carries

• Asset number — allocate with a number scheme rather than typing.
• Entity — which legal company owns it, and therefore whose books depreciation reaches.
• Class — the grouping that drives depreciation method and useful life.
• Item reference — a link to the product record where the asset is something you also sell or stock.
• Location and custodian — where it is and who holds it.
• Acquisition date, cost and currency — the basis for everything financial that follows.

Get acquisition data right at entry

Cost and date drive every depreciation calculation. Because depreciation is written per period rather than recalculated on demand, correcting an acquisition cost after periods have posted does not retrospectively fix them — you are left reconciling posted figures against a basis that has since changed.

Verify before the first depreciation run. It is far cheaper than the alternative.

Custodian and location

These are what make the register useful operationally rather than only financially. An annual verification asks a custodian to confirm they still hold what the register says, and that is only possible if somebody is named.

Keep them current when equipment moves. A register nobody updates becomes a list of things you used to own.

Classes

Keep classes aligned to how your accountants group assets, because that is what the depreciation policy attaches to. Resist a class per asset type — the register is not the place to model your product hierarchy.

Disposals

Record disposal rather than deleting the asset. The history — what it cost, what it depreciated, what it sold for, and the resulting gain or loss — is exactly what the accounts need at year end, and a deleted asset takes all of it with it.

Worked example

A fleet of 40 vehicles is loaded with acquisition dates, costs and registration numbers, classed as Motor Vehicles with a four-year life. Each has a custodian. The annual verification is an email to 40 drivers asking them to confirm the vehicle they hold — which found two vehicles recorded against people who had left.

Recommendations

• Verify acquisition cost and date before the first depreciation run.
• Name a custodian on everything portable.
• Keep classes to your accounting policy, not your product structure.
• Record disposals; never delete an asset.

Meters and Preventive Maintenance

Meters record usage — hours run, miles driven, copies produced, cycles completed — and drive usage-based maintenance.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → ERP - Operations:

• Asset Meters — readings, with rollover handled
• Maintenance Schedules — what should be done and how often
• Assets — the asset each meter belongs to

Rollover is handled

Meters wrap. A five-digit hour meter goes from 99999 to 0, and a naive system reads that as negative usage of 99999 hours — which would either raise a nonsense alert or, worse, reset the maintenance clock.

Rollover is handled explicitly, so a wrapped reading is interpreted as continued usage. You need do nothing beyond recording readings honestly, including the one after the wrap.

Recording readings

Readings are dated observations, not a current value that gets overwritten. Keeping the history is what shows usage rate over time, which is what makes a usage-based schedule predictable rather than reactive.

Record at a regular cadence. Sporadic readings make the interval between services a guess, and the guess is always optimistic.

Scheduling maintenance

• By elapsed time — every six months regardless of use. Right for things that degrade whether used or not, and for statutory inspections.
• By usage — every 500 hours or 10,000 miles. Right for wear-driven servicing.

Many assets need both, whichever falls first. A vehicle serviced every 10,000 miles or twelve months should not go three years because it was little used.

Due and overdue

Review the due list as a forward plan, not an overdue report. The point of preventive maintenance is acting before failure; a list looked at only when something breaks is a maintenance log with extra steps.

Connect it to time and stock

Where maintenance is carried out in-house, book time against the asset and issue parts from stock against the same job. That gives you the real cost of ownership — which is the figure that informs whether to keep repairing or replace, and it is almost never available otherwise.

Worked example

A plant hire company services machines every 250 hours or annually. Operators record hours weekly. The due list is reviewed each Monday and jobs scheduled a fortnight ahead. Parts and labour book against the asset, so after two years the maintenance cost per machine is a report rather than an argument — and two machines are replaced on the evidence.

Recommendations

• Read meters on a fixed cadence, not when somebody remembers.
• Use both time and usage triggers where either could come first.
• Review the due list weekly, forward-looking.
• Book time and parts to the asset so cost of ownership is real.

Depreciation

Depreciation spreads an asset's cost across its useful life. The design decision that matters: it is written for each period, not recomputed whenever somebody looks.

Where to find it

Architect Panel → ERP - Operations:

• Depreciation — the posted charge per asset per period
• Assets — the method, life and residual value

Architect Panel → Automation:

• Tasks — the Asset Depreciation task, daily

Why written, not recomputed

If depreciation were calculated on read, editing a useful life or a residual value would restate every period already reported. Somebody adjusting an estimate in October would change what was reported in March — without intending to, and without anybody noticing.

Writing the charge means posted figures stay posted. A change to an estimate affects future periods, which is also how accounting standards expect a change in estimate to be treated.

Re-running a period is refused

Running depreciation for a period already run is rejected rather than silently doubling the charge.

Depreciation runs are usually scheduled, and a scheduled job that runs twice because of a retry or an overlapping window is not unusual. Refusing the second run is what makes the schedule safe to leave alone. If a period genuinely needs correcting, post an adjustment, visible as such.

Setting up

Depreciation needs the method, the useful life and any residual value — usually held at class level so a policy is applied consistently rather than decided per asset by whoever created it.

Running it

The Asset Depreciation task ships disabled. Enable it daily so a period end is never missed, and run depreciation as part of period close, before closing. The charge posts to the ledger like any other journal, so it appears in the period's figures and in the trial balance you review.

Assets acquired mid-period

Decide your convention — full period in the month of acquisition, pro-rata by days, or none until the following period — and apply it consistently. Any of them is defensible; changing between them is not, and it is the kind of inconsistency an auditor finds quickly.

Checking

Reconcile accumulated depreciation to the register periodically. A divergence usually means an asset was added with a wrong acquisition date, or a disposal was recorded without stopping the depreciation.

Worked example

A company runs depreciation nightly. At month end the charge is already posted, so close is a review rather than a task. A laptop disposed of mid-month stops depreciating from the disposal date, and the year-end reconciliation between accumulated depreciation and the register agrees to the penny — which is what makes the audit straightforward.

Recommendations

• Hold method and life at class level, not per asset.
• Run daily so a period end is never missed.
• Fix the mid-period convention once and write it down.
• Reconcile to the register at least annually.