In this guide:

1. What Is An Asset Register?
2. What Should You Add To Your Register?
3. Creating A Fixed Asset Register
4. Depreciating Your Assets
5. Using Asset Management Software

In this guide:

1. What Is An Asset Register?
2. What Should You Add To Your Register?
3. Creating A Fixed Asset Register
4. Depreciating Your Assets
5. Using Asset Management Software

An asset register is a way for your business to monitor what you own, how assets are behaving, and any asset-related costs. Overall, an asset register gives you:

• More visibility over your assets
• More visibility over asset finances
• More control over your assets
• Fewer lost assets
• Fewer duplicate purchases
• A clear view over how your assets behave

Most businesses are opting for a pen and paper method and logging changes in a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet will act as an asset register but has too many gaps and inefficiencies to remain viable.

Spreadsheets have your assets in one column, their identifiable information in the next, then all other columns are specific fields relevant to your assets. If you think about these fields and how some are relevant to some assets and not to others, this can quickly become a lengthy, unwieldy, and impossible to manage spreadsheet, especially as the data you’ll likely need to find and change will live in a single cell.

This is where asset management software systems come into play. These automatically create an asset register, ready for you to view, manage, and export.

An asset register is a list of your assets with data assigned to them. The assets themselves will depend on which industry your in and the data will depend on what you’re using your asset register for.

Every business should have a fixed asset register and an IT asset register. Fixed assets are permanent business fixtures that aren’t sold and are instead used by your business. IT assets are your laptops, phones, and any other assets with IT capabilities, such as USB sticks.

The data itself can be pricing information, maintenance data, equipment booking information, and more. However, a fixed asset register should track asset values.

Your asset register will either be a spreadsheet or a pdf and you can use it for:

• Tax and insurance purposes
• Mitigating ghost and zombie assets
• Seeing what you own quickly
• Tracking asset movements
• Tracking depreciation

Your asset register should contain relevant assets that you need to track. Thankfully, with asset management software you can add all of your assets and segment them into different, filtered reports.

In other words, you can add all of your assets, such as fixed assets, vehicles, and IT assets, then create an asset register specific to only your IT assets for separate reporting purposes.

Your asset register, therefore, should contain assets relevant to auditing operations. Any assets that you need to track and maintain accountability over should be on your asset register. 

In terms of fixed asset management, you will be able to add all of your fixed assets to your system, but on an asset register filter out any assets with a value of under £200, say, if you don’t need these to be tracked.

When creating a fixed asset register, the simplest way to do this is by using asset management software. Asset management software allows you to log your assets as unique profiles on an online system and track them this way.

Instead of using a spreadsheet, therefore, if you want to see the relevant information against a specific asset, you don’t need to find that asset on your spreadsheet, you can enter its unique profile instead.

Issues management and data entry, for example, are much simpler this way, as you’re logging information against a specific asset in a streamlined and transparent view. 

You can speed this along further by using asset tags. Every time you scan an asset’s tag, the last seen location will update, the asset’s profile will open, and the time of scan and user who scanned the tag will get logged, creating a streamlined and neat audit trail.

All of this data is pulled into your fixed asset register automatically, ready to be managed, filtered and exported. As you can filter these reports, therefore, you can pick and choose which data gets exported. This way, you can export a report on your IT assets separately to your fixed asset register with ease, keeping a clear log of everything you need to know.

Your reports will also include a section to monitor your assets’ values. These values will depreciate, showing you how much depreciation has occurred against a group of assets, or against all of your assets, each month.

These reports are filterable, so if you only need to export and view data of assets above a certain value, this is entirely possible. 

As you’ll have all of your issues data, as well as day to day tracking data, too, you get the best of both worlds. For example, if an asset has fully depreciated, you will be able to look into that asset and view its history to get more context about this asset.

Using these features in tandem within a single asset management software gives you much more clarity and control over what your assets are doing.

When you use asset management software, you get the benefit of an automated asset register.

An asset register:

• Prevents fines for unaccounted for assets
• Shows you what you own
• Prevents duplicate purchases
• Prevents asset loss
• Gives you a clear view of your finances
• Helps speed up asset-level operations
• Helps speed up tax and insurance audits

When you use asset management software, you get all of these benefits and more. An asset management software provides you with asset-level functionality, too, such as the ability to book and check assets in and out, the ability to report issues, and the ability to track asset locations via tagging and tracking capabilities.

To find out more about how asset management software will help your business, you’ll be able to contact the itemit team at team@itemit.com. You can also fill in the form below to start your very own 14-day free trial.

Instant access. No credit card details required.

or, download the itemit app to get started

In this guide:

1. Inventory Management Software Benefits
2. Asset Tracking Software Benefits
3. The Differences
4. itemit’s Asset Tracking App

In this guide:

1. Inventory Management Software Benefits
2. Asset Tracking Software Benefits
3. The Differences
4. itemit’s Asset Tracking App

What are the differences between inventory management software and asset tracking software? Both are useful in separate scenarios, and this guide will run you through the benefits of each.

In essence, inventory management software is helpful for stock and consumables, where asset tracking software is effective at tracking granular, asset level information.

Therefore, what your company needs will depend on your daily operations and the systems you already have in place.

Inventory management software is very effective at tracking stock and consumables. This is because your inventory will change frequently and you won’t need to know specific details for each asset.

Inventory, therefore, can be added to inventory management software as non-unique profiles. In other words, as most of your inventory will end up with an end-user, the most important pieces of information are how much of your stock you have and how much you’re selling.

This means that inventory management software must be fluid, easy to monitor, easy to manage and pump out all the values and information you need to know. It does not need to show you unique identifiable information about all of your inventory.

Asset tracking software does the opposite. Instead of tracking inventory, or fluid, constantly changing numbers, it tracks assets on a unique level. In other words, with asset tracking software you will log all of your assets as unique, digital profiles.

Therefore, you can use asset tracking software for fixed asset tracking, tools and equipment tracking, IT asset management and more. This is because you can add granular information against your assets.

So, if a tool gets damaged, you will be able to pinpoint which tool is damaged, where the tool is, and rectify the issue with ease. You can also track locations with asset tracking software and speed up operations by using asset tags, operations that wouldn’t be relevant in an inventory management context.

The main difference between asset tracking software and inventory management software is that one tracks unique, granular data, while the other tracks trends, movements, and overarching updates.

Both of these types of tracking are incredibly useful, however, they need to be applied to the correct use cases. For example, you won’t be able to track asset damage with inventory management software.

At first glance, there seems to be a lot of overlap between the two systems. For example, when you’re tracking fixed assets you need to know the number of assets for tax and insurance purposes.

The difference, therefore, is that stock and inventory is less tangible than a fixed asset. Fixed assets will remain within your business and will indirectly generate profit, where inventory will directly generate profit.

itemit’s asset tracking system is built for asset tracking and management. Within itemit, you can track unique assets and use helpful features to manage them. For example, you will be able to use itemit as an equipment booking system while also tracking your depreciation.

itemit does also have integrated inventory features. Now you can make master profiles to track stock levels. This is helpful when you need to report on the number of consumables you have but don’t need to know specifics about them.

With a public API, too, you will be able to integrate itemit with other systems, meaning you can interface between a system that’s tailor-made and proven to track your assets effectively, and one that’s effective at tracking your inventory, too.

To find out more about how itemit can benefit your business, you’ll be able to contact the team at team@itemit.com. You can also fill in the form below to start your 14-day free trial.

Instant access. No credit card details required.

or, download the itemit app to get started