How Does A Fixed Asset Register Differ From Inventory?

When you’re looking to manage assets or inventory it’s important to know the differences. In short, your inventory is consumables and stock, where your assets are the things you physically use day to day.

As such, having a system for either helps you track and manage different things. An inventory management system will help you keep track of supply levels where a fixed asset register software will help you monitor asset locations and use.

Fixed asset register software allows you to log all of your assets into a digital system. What is a fixed asset? An asset that can’t be easily converted into cash.

So, your fixed assets are furniture, laptops, tools, equipment and other assets that are used in the day to day running of your business and not assets that you sell.

Why do you need to track fixed assets? When you track your fixed assets you can monitor how they depreciate and avoid common risks, such as asset loss, duplicate purchases or ghost and zombie assets on your asset register.

Having a fixed asset register allows you to customise reports on your asset data and export this, giving you everything you need to know about your assets.

Inventory management software is a system whereby you can monitor your stock levels and consumables. Inventory is not a permanent fixture in your business like furniture or laptops are and so needs to be tracked differently.

When you’re tracking your inventory, there may be some overlap with what you track on a fixed asset register. For example, you’ll need to know the locations of your stock so that you can monitor a workflow.

However, with inventory management software you’ll be tracking numbers and trends more than specific asset data such as “twenty of this into that warehouse”.

In turn, this kind of tracking gives you more visibility over your business’ supply chain and helps you foresee and mitigate potential disruptions in service.

The main difference, therefore, is the granularity of data. A fixed asset register lets you track asset data on an asset’s level. So, you’ll know the ownership details of that asset, where it is, and if it’s well maintained.

On the other hand, inventory management software lets you track a group of assets without that granularity. So, instead of seeing pinpoint asset data such as which of your assets is damaged, you’ll see where a group of your assets have come from, in bulk, with ease.

Traditionally, these two systems are kept separate as they do very very different things. Fixed asset tracking software would need to be scaled up significantly to show trends of thousands upon thousands of assets when the fact of the matter is that this granularity isn’t needed for inventory. Some functionality does still overlap between systems, however.

itemit’s fixed asset management software lets you monitor, track and manage your fixed assets. With itemit, you get more visibility over how your assets are behaving, who has them and where they are.

itemit does have inventory management features integrated into it, too, but the system is best used for asset management first with elements of inventory second.

The features in the system allow you to add, track and monitor any asset data. Then, you can export customised reports of this information.

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

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