Our diligent, highly trained and skilled personnel can help your company with the fixed assets count – tagging and counting, and reconciling the results of the count with the existing fixed assets ledgers; organizing your existing records and guiding your personnel in the proper recordkeeping and maintenance of your company’s fixed assets ledgers.

Maintenance and reconciliation

Most companies, including those that are not capital asset-intensive, have a difficult time properly maintaining their fixed asset ledgers for various reasons.

In some cases, additions to existing assets — such as major repairs that can be capitalized — are not identified and are therefore excluded from the net realizable or net depreciable values of the existing assets. In this case, the depreciation of the additions, which should only be up to the remaining lives of the existing assets (unless of course new depreciable lives of the assets are determined), is not computed correctly. As a result, the additions become new assets and are depreciated using the full useful lives of the existing assets.

Other companies struggle with the issue of transfer of assets. Assets are moved from one location to another, or from one division to another. While the transfers are documented, the paper trail is not always clear or complete, so that the new location or division where the asset is moved to is not correctly captured in the fixed assets ledgers. As a result, fixed assets count show some locations or divisions that are missing assets while other divisions disclose discovered assets. This makes the matching and offsetting of the missing and discovered assets quite difficult.

Correct maintenance of a company’s fixed assets ledger allows the business to accurately compute the depreciation of its assets. It also makes it easier for the company to identify and remove those assets that are written off or disposed. In the case of disposal, having an accurate fixed assets ledger also means the resulting gain or loss in the disposal transaction can be computed properly. Moreover, with accurate records on hand, a company can determine adequate insurance coverage and facilitate claims for the insurance cover of the assets when insurable acts arise.

P&A Grant Thornton Outsourcing, Inc. (P&A Grant Thornton) can be counted on to assist you in the preparation, reconciliation and maintenance of your fixed assets ledgers. Our diligent, highly trained and skilled personnel can help your company with the fixed assets count – tagging and counting, and reconciling the results of the count with the existing fixed assets ledgers; organizing your existing records and guiding your personnel in the proper recordkeeping and maintenance of your company’s fixed assets ledgers.