Top Ways to Measure Your Business Performance with Asset Reports

Pause and think for a second! How would you feel when you are in the middle of a business meeting, and you do not have data to justify your spending on departmental assets? You will find yourself in a cumbersome situation with a lack of clarity on your data. 

That’s where asset reports come in! Detailed asset reports are a great way to gain in-depth insights into performance metrics, such as asset utilization, frequency of check-ins/outs and equipment uptime. Manually compiling these details can get challenging, so businesses often opt for automated solutions to run reports and achieve accurate results. 

Such solutions simplify the process of generating reports and help provide real-time insights into how well you are managing your assets for enhanced asset control. 

This blog discusses the importance of asset reports for businesses and the main types of reports businesses can run to achieve operational efficiency. 

What are asset reports? 

Asset reports are detailed documents designed to provide an overview of financial and operational metrics for analysis. They serve as the single source of truth to quantify business performance. With accurate data consolidation, relevant stakeholders can better assess if the assets are being handled correctly or not. Likewise, they can assess the ROI on critical assets to make financial decisions for business growth. 

Typically reports fulfill the following functions with enhanced data analysis: 

Function	Reports help
Asset Management	Provide a birds eye view of your asset landscape to help assess how you are tracking, monitoring, and managing all kinds of assets and inventory
Inventory Management	Better manage inventory by allowing users to know the inventory consumption, count, total costs incurred, reorder points, and future consumption
Financial Management	Consolidate critical financial metrics, such as costs incurred on inventory, into an easily understandable format for quick analysis
Maintenance Management	Monitor asset servicing from time to time to assess the total spending on maintenance, and help make maintenance decisions
Auditing	Summarize the results of an audit for compliance purposes, and conduct physical audits with detailed asset and inventory count
Member Management	Manage data pertaining to employees to assess their complete details, onboarding dates, and assets in their possession

Reports, however, do not only perform these functions but serve other important purposes that drive business value. 

Benefits of asset reports

Asset reports help in data analysis and justifying whether the assets are helping achieve the end goal of all businesses: increased bottom line. The aim is to ensure that all asset-related activities are aligned with the asset management principles. With regular analysis, you can ensure that you are on track with your goals while following your business asset management plan. 

Here are some primary objectives businesses aim to achieve by running reports:

1. Data Accuracy

By running a specialized report, businesses can gather all the relevant information from one place. For example, the admin manager wants to check the total value of all the IT equipment checked out to employees. They can simply generate fields such as asset names, current asset value, asset custodian, and location. All these details in a single accurate report will give a quick snapshot of assets owned by employees in a given time period. 

Accurate financial reports help ensure regulatory compliance as they offer complete visibility into asset ownership and enhanced asset use throughout their lifecycle. 

2. Budget tracking 

A business can generate reports to assess the amount of capital invested in different assets and inventory. For instance, you can easily get a view of the total value of your assets location-wise to assess the overall investment in a certain location. This data can be used to operate within a budget, and in times of financial constraints, help make decisions about where and how to minimize expenses on assets. 

Similarly, you can generate reports, like ‘Sales Margin’ reports to assess the total cost and revenue associated with each inventory item. Such reports can be scheduled quarterly to gain insights into how well the funds are being allocated to achieve the overarching aim of increased ROI. In turn, these details help guide critical decisions related to asset retirement and replacement. 

3. Transparency and accountability  

Reports on asset ownership and checkouts are useful to determine how and where items are being used. Such reports help audit how assets are being used by the organization. Regular reports can be designed to inspect whether items were returned on time and in optimal condition. 

In case of discrepancies, the item trail can be investigated to avoid further losses.  

4. Optimized operational performance

Businesses can optimize their daily performance once they have a detailed view of their assets. Identifying underperforming assets and presenting reports to higher management becomes fairly straightforward when you are regularly generating them.

You can also schedule the reports so these are forwarded at the required time. For instance, a report regarding asset check-ins/outs can be sent to the operations managers every month so they can arrange for more assets at the time of full capacity. 

Reports help highlight and assess Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). In case, the set KPIs are not being achieved, you can initiate a corrective action to keep achieving the goals. You can identify bottlenecks and any challenges hindering achieving the operational benchmarks. This way, you can strategically manage assets while optimizing their performance. 

Steps to creating an effective asset management report

Using an asset management system to create reports can be highly beneficial for your business’s long-term growth. You can save time and energy using two different systems for data consolidation and data analysis. An asset management system pulls data directly from the asset repository to summarize results for your reports. 

Here’s how you can create a report using your asset management system:

1. Create a database

The first step to generate reports is adding essential asset data to your account. This includes adding asset details, like asset name, identification number, model number, etc. With a central hub, users can select the assets they want to check out/check-in, reserve, or send for maintenance. Data stored on the asset register enables users to conduct various actions. 

These actions serve as the foundation for report data; ensure that the data is up-to-date so the records are updated too. 

2. Decide the report objectives

Before creating a report, it is important to finalize what you want to achieve with the report. This includes checking the overall business objectives, and deciding what report would be the most appropriate to serve a specific purpose. For instance, identifying who the report is for and for what purpose. This helps decide the amount and the kind of detail to be included in the report. 

For instance, a construction company might be shutting down operations at a specific location. Keeping this in mind, the operations managers might decide to generate an ‘Asset Transfer’ report to have detailed documentation of what assets have been transferred to a new location or warehouse.

Based on the objective you can decide the report type to be generated. So, assessing the purpose is the key to successful reporting! 

3. Apply formulas and filters

Once you have selected the report type, decide on what module you need the data on. Select multiple yet related modules to gather data from various sources.

Apply filters, select specific sections from modules, and use formulas to quantify data. You can get the sum and averages of check-ins/outs, inventory, and reservations for decision-making purposes. 

4. Add visual aids

Creating and adding visual aids to your report is one of the most viable ways to make your data more interactive. Typically, you can choose from bar graphs, line graphs, pie charts, and scatter plots to present your data. Customize your graphs to ensure you can present information in a more easily digestible format. 

5. Generate and schedule the report

After you have taken a preview of the report, make sure that it is good to go. Save the report and schedule it to be sent at a later date. Select the time and date on which you want your report to be sent and the user who is to receive the report. You can also alerts for the report so the users get a notification every time they receive one. 

 5 Asset Reports to Boost Your Asset Management Strategy 

Organizations can run several important reports to gauge asset performance and assess financial statements throughout the year. Each report can be set to cover a critical aspect such as finances, inventory, depreciation, and maintenance.

Let’s go over the main types of asset reports 

1. Asset value, depreciation, and audit reports 

Organizations own different types of assets including fixed assets, inventory stock, and current assets. These different types of assets are valued in a certain way depending on their lifespan and depreciation method. For this reason, it is a good idea to run financial reports including the following information regarding all assets:

• Current asset valuation
• Asset depreciation
• Disposal costs 
• Asset investments (cost price) 

These reports are generated to determine fixed assets earning potential, life valuation, and operating cost. Doing so is important because fixed assets depreciate over time, so running reports on the current valuation is useful for filing taxes and compiling audits. 

Apart from fixed asset reports, audit reports are useful for maintaining accountability and transparency. Audit reports usually include data on how and where the assets are used. Any damaged or broken assets are flagged and the total asset value is adjusted accordingly. These reports play a significant part in achieving asset management compliance and risk aversion. 

2. Asset Lifecycle Report

The entire asset lifecycle comprises various stages beginning from vendor selection to procurement, depreciation, and disposal. An asset lifecycle report can include the following details:

• Procurement details  
• Depreciation method/value 
• Maintenance history 
• Rate of return

An asset lifecycle report is an important source of information regarding performance. It can convey patterns on the useful lifespan of an asset. For instance, if an asset is experiencing frequent downtimes and requires constant spare parts and replacements, then that asset may not be the ideal investment. 

Other than this, a lifecycle report can also act as an indicator of seasonal trends. If an asset is experiencing high usage during a certain time period, it can be useful to pre-plan procurement and maintenance for the next year. 

3. Asset management and utilization

You can tag all of its assets and then track them along their entire lifecycle. An asset management report covers essential details such as where the assets are located, who is using them, and for how long. It covers the following aspects:  

• Assets located in different locations
• Asset movement history 
• Assigned users
• Retired assets 
• Utilization 

Asset management and utilization reports provide an overview of the movement and allocation of resources across locations. It mainly includes location tracking and how assets are moved around for various projects. This can be a good way to maintain asset usage and ownership history to track back during audits. 

Other than this, the utilization report shows how often assets are being checked out for projects and by whom. Having access to usage data can help guide success metrics for each asset. 

4. Inventory Management 

Inventory management is an integral part of business operations. Running asset inventory reports gives you insights related to stock quantities, turnover rates, and sales margin. Here is what an inventory management report covers:

• Low stock
• Excess stock 
• Total inventory value
• Stock summary 
• Inventory gaps 

Consumable items can run out of stock very quickly without any warning. To avoid untimely stock outages, it is important to keep track of stock usage at each location. Reports on excess stock and low stock can help businesses decide which locations need to be restocked regularly while holding back procurement at other locations. 

Moreover, reports on inventory gaps can help define time periods before restocking critical inventory. Keeping tabs on inventory stock enables organizations to calculate the total value of consumables at a given time. 

5. Asset Maintenance Reports

80% of equipment maintenance is reactive when it should be proactive. Detailed asset maintenance or asset condition reports keep the team updated on an asset’s efficiency. They offer valuable insights about its running cost and optimal performance windows, helping the asset manager devise the ideal asset maintenance strategy. 

A maintenance report includes:

• Inspection dates
• Maintenance schedule
• Asset’s life cycle progress 

A maintenance planning program is vital for a business mainly comprising physical assets. It helps keep equipment and machinery working optimally for longer, allowing you to extract the most value from an asset without worrying about unplanned downtime. 

Utilize asset reports for operational efficiency 

Asset reports are more than a powerful tool – they are crucial to drive your business toward success. With the rise of technology, you will find plenty of software to help you with asset management.

So choose the one that meets your specific asset management reporting requirements and seamlessly fulfills your existing needs.