Auditing and Fixed Asset Tracking Software

Audits are a systematic review of all business assets. These could include financial documents, statutory records, as well as equipment, to ensure that all data present reflects the state of the business as accurately as possible. Fixed assets are often a big part of equipment audits. This is because they can cost a lot of money to procure and maintain, and keeping accurate records with reference to these assets can safeguard against a lot of problems later down the line. Fixed asset tracking software can be a great tool to have to carry out these kinds of audits quickly and effectively. Before we go into how they make this possible, though, let’s learn a bit more about audits!

Why should you audit your fixed assets?

Audits are crucial for a well-functioning business. They can provide a whole host of benefits to companies, ensuring smoother workflows and better informed upper management. Some of the major reasons you should audit fixed assets are as follows:

• Identify bottlenecks and bolster operational efficiency
• Lower the mismanagement of resources
• Enhance the credibility of figures forwarded by your company
• Increase transparency for greater shareholder trust
• Eliminate paying taxes on ghost assets
• Make better decisions relating to asset procurement and retirement

Fixed asset audits enable you to draw up more efficient operational workflows

For fixed asset management therefore, a physical asset audit is particularly important as it helps you make sense of reams of data related to these items. You can then use this information to make your processes more efficient, lower costs, and identify areas that could use some improvement.

Read more: Fixed Asset Management Software Made Easy

What details should an audit capture?

For a fixed asset tracking software to carry out a seamless audit of all your business assets, it must be able to capture certain details about an item. This is so you can revisit this information when making decisions about procurement, maintenance, retirement, or to draw up schedules, go over warranties, look at item specifications, etc.

A few questions you should ask when gathering information about an asset include: Is the asset valued correctly? Is the purchase date correct? Is the asset in the appropriate group and does it correspond to the correct location? In addition, you should also make sure that figures such as taxes, installation costs, and transport charges associated with the asset are accurate. In addition to this, you should have information relating to the following data points:

• Depreciation: You would want to make sure the depreciation rate accurately reflects the type of fixed asset in use. Not only should the fixed asset tracking software be able to consistently calculate depreciation appropriately, but it should also give you access to reports to analyze this in detail.
• Procurement: Ensure that the dates, costs, and vendor details associated with the asset are properly logged and shared with relevant parties.
• Tracking: Custodianship should be tracked on all fixed assets. This is particularly important as a stolen or misplaced fixed asset can really make a dent in a company’s budget.
• Maintenance: Servicing schedules should be as efficient as possible, and an impairment review should be carried out to ensure all your fixed assets are as productive as they can possibly be.

A fixed asset tracking software would normally have these details already logged, independently of an audit. In this way, the audit itself would just be a quick overview of whether assets are present where they’re meant to be, what condition they’re in, and any other questions you’d want answered.

Read more: Taxes Made Easy With Fixed Asset Management Software

What are the steps to carrying out audits?

Audits can be simple enough to carry out if you follow a fixed set of steps. Say you want all your construction equipment on a certain construction site or at a warehouse to be audited by your local team. It would all begin with a basic plan for an audit, where you determine which assets you’d want to audit, where they’re located, and which employees would be tasked with carrying out these audits. You could then actually go over and implement the audit! Items can be quickly processed by the auditor, with the information syncing over onto the cloud in real time using the fixed asset tracking software. Data insights can then be drawn up using all this information, with the audit report being shared across different departments. Data managers can then analyze and learn from all the actionable information contained within the reports, and draw up suggestions for future improvements. To sum up, the basic steps to carrying out an audit are as follows:

What tools can help out with audits?

We’ve already learned that fixed asset tracking software can be a great tool for companies wishing to audit their fixed assets. This is not only because they enable you to capture essential audit details and carry out each of the steps required for an audit, but also because they provide in-depth features that can make carrying out audits really easy. We’ll outline a few of them below:

• Mobile apps: This helps your employees carry out audits from any location or field site. They can use the mobile apps to record audit data, and share information about fixed assets anywhere, at any time.
• An on-the-cloud solution: A SaaS-based model is essential when carrying out audits. This is because you can audit fixed assets simultaneously from different sites, and all this information would sync to the cloud instantly. This way, the administrative hub of your company can have access to real-time data on the field!

Mobile apps can help improve the flow of audit information across departments

• Reports: A reporting module enables you to quickly draft up handy reports to share with different teams. This doesn’t just have to relate to audit reports, but all kinds of other data points that can supplement the main audit process.
• Label scanning: To ensure that you’re able to identify hundreds of assets in quick succession, you can scan Barcode and QR Code labels on your fixed assets. This not only makes the process a lot more efficient, but also lowers the risk of human error that audits must avoid at all costs.

Conclusion

Fixed asset tracking software is a great tool for businesses that want to carry out fixed asset audits quickly and efficiently. It can enable business to capture relevant details from any location, at any time, and make this audit information easily accessible across different departments through the use of handy reports. This ensures you keeps costs low, and don’t have to spend valuable resources replacing stolen or poorly-maintained fixed assets, or paying taxes on equipment you don’t have any more!

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EZOfficeInventory is the leading fixed asset management software used by scores of businesses around the globe.