Working with Fixed Assets

Fixed Assets reads your asset register, the list of what you own with its cost and the date you bought it. It compares the register with your invoices, your books and your depreciation policy, the rule for how much of an asset's cost you write off each year. It reports whatever does not agree and shows the difference in dollars. This page is how to work with it from day to day.

What to put in the Data Room

Your asset register is sufficient to begin. Export it from your accounting system as a PDF and add it to the Data Room. It is neither an agreement nor an invoice, so it sits beside Contracts and Agreements and Invoices as its own kind. The module's Data Room tab lists it under Asset register. The register alone lets three checks run. They test whether each asset still exists, whether its useful life, the years you spread its cost over, is within your policy, and whether its depreciation for the year follows your policy.

Add the invoices for anything you bought that might be an asset, in Invoices. An invoice lets the module test a purchase against your capitalisation threshold, the price above which you capitalise a purchase. To capitalise is to record a purchase as an asset and write its cost off over years rather than all at once. It also lets the module match each asset added in the year to the invoice behind it, by amount and date. Your policy itself is not a document. The module asks for it a question at a time, and only when a check needs it.

Add documents with Add to Data Room, as PDFs, or let a Connection bring them in. A Xero Connection brings in the rows of your accounts, including your ledger balances, the totals in your books. Those rows are examined the same way as a document you added. With the ledger in place, the module checks that the register's totals for cost and depreciation to date equal the balances in your books. Money received in those rows, or a note you add to context, lets it notice an asset you sold or scrapped. Open the module's Data Room tab to see which documents it has drawn on and to link one it has not used yet. The Data Room explains where documents live and what each kind is for.

When it asks you a question

Fixed Assets asks you nothing when you add it. It asks a question only when a check needs the answer, and until then it uses a sensible default and names it in the finding, so you can correct it when it matters. Five questions can arise: above what price a purchase counts as an asset rather than an expense, how many years you spread the cost of each kind of asset over, whether you spread that cost evenly or front-load it, where your assets live, and any big item you lease rather than own.

A question arrives as a needs-information finding in the Findings list, and as a card in Ask Ressura. Your answer becomes an entry in your Organisational context, with your name and the date on it, and the check runs again automatically. Your threshold, your useful lives, your method and your locations apply to every asset in the module. An item you name as leased applies to that asset only.

How to read a finding

The module's Overview shows Misclassified, the sum in dollars of what is booked the wrong way in the fiscal year, your company's accounting year. It adds up purchases written off all at once that your policy says to capitalise, purchases put on the register that your policy says to write off at once, and depreciation that does not follow your policy. The list of your Assets sits beneath it, each with its cost, its book value, which is the cost less depreciation to date, and the exceptions on it. Its Findings tab lists every finding: the asset, the Control that produced it, its kind, the amount where there is one, the confidence, its disposition and the date. Choose Review finding to open one.

An exception says what the register or your books show, what your invoice or your policy says it should be, and the difference. For depreciation, it shows the amount on the register beside the amount your policy gives for that asset. That second amount comes from your method, your rate and your useful life, applied to the asset's cost from the date it went into service. Its provenance shows the register line, the invoice, the policy entry it applied and the ledger balance, each with its date, so you can check the arithmetic yourself. When a finding leans on a default rather than a value you gave, it says so explicitly.

A needs-information finding names the document or the answer that would let a check finish: the invoice behind an asset added this year, or the date an asset went into service. An asset with no activity, location or owner for twelve months raises one that asks you to confirm it still exists and where it is. It never blocks the other checks. A fraud-risk finding comes from Fraud Watch and links the findings behind it. The Checks tab shows each of the seven Controls with its pass, exception and needs-information counts for the year.

How to disposition a finding

You answer a finding in one of three ways, and each answer is recorded with your name and the date. Accept an exception when the books are wrong, such as a machine booked as a repair cost that your policy says to capitalise, and add a note if you like. Reject it with the reason when the books are right, such as an item you lease rather than own, which never belonged on the register. The reason becomes a context entry, scoped to this finding, this asset, this module or the whole company, so the same point is never raised twice. Answer a needs-information finding by adding the invoice it asks for or by typing the answer, and the check runs again. Telling the module where a forklift is, and that it is still in use, is one such answer.

An asset's own page, under Assets, gathers its findings, its documents and its context entries in one place. Its header shows the asset's class, cost, date in service, location, useful life and book value. Findings and Dispositions has the rules every module shares, including the two-person rule for rejecting a fraud-risk finding.

What it costs

Running its checks, opening a finding and dispositioning one cost nothing, and checking the same documents again is free.

This page is the how-to. The Fixed Assets page says why it exists and what it checks.