Asset Management is an essential process to manage an organization's hardware assets and inventory. It is the process of strategic planning for an organization and its environment, for its cost savings and other important benefits.
The asset management system allows your business accounts to manage and monitor various types of assets, such as computers, furniture, and fixtures, machines, equipment, or fleet that are being utilized in your organization.
It's important to track all the assets that your organization owns, like who has its acquisition; how they are utilized; when they need maintenance; and when they should be depreciated or discarded.
The organization of every size of any industry uses an asset management system whether on paper or even on spreadsheets.
With the paper solution, there are some of the standard problems such as loss and damage of papers, misspellings, other errors in the data entry, or even attachment of all the papers in a file.
Whereas, with the asset management spreadsheet solution, there are also some problems such as creating a spreadsheet, filling it, or regular updates or errors in updating the data.
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But through an automated asset management solution, you can use manage the workflow easily and keep the accurate track record of your assets and inventory.
Here are some usages of asset management workflow that can help you to improve your asset management process and hold a better grip over it.
- Track of asset life cycle
- Determine the condition of each asset
- Implementation of correct asset management program
- Use of automated solution for asset tracking and management
What Does an Asset Management Process or Asset Management Workflow Include?
For a better understanding of the asset management process, you need to know all the factors responsible to deal with assets. As the better knowledge about the key points or necessary factors of an asset, greater will be your hold on the asset management process of your organization. This way you can manage your business assets efficiently.
Determine the Asset Management Structure
When implementing the asset management application, you will have to determine the following elements in your organization to plan the asset management structure properly:
- Asset Accounting
- Reporting elements
- Depreciation records
- Depreciation calculating methods
Adjust Asset Records
You can adjust some information of the asset and asset records, such as:
- Assets those work is under process
- Simulated assets
- Tax-exempt
- Used assets
- Type or category of assets
- Accounting group of each asset
- Assets' Accounting unit
- Method of recording each asset
- The entire life of assets
- Utilized the life of each asset
- The remaining life of each
- Started date of service of each asset
- Convention
- Status of each asset
Transfer of Assets from One Location to Another (Maybe Department to Department or a Different Site)
Asset management solution allows to transfer individual assets or multiple assets:
- Within the company
- Between different asset groups
- Different locations (out on field location)
- Location within the organization
- Within different division or department
- Interchange (transfer) according to the type or subtype of the asset
- Differentiating on the account group also assets can be transferred
Asset Management Process
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1. Add Assets
The authorized person can add assets individually to the asset management application by entering all the required data directly. The assets can be added manually or, imported using a pre-defined excel/CSV template file.
2. Add Assets from Other Application
Organizations that want to shift from their existing asset management application to Asset Infinity's asset management software application, can easily make a shift without worrying about their asset's information to be distorted in any way.
These organizations have already generated the unique ID codes for their assets, these unique asset codes are needed to be scanned and receive the respective asset details.
3. Change in Asset Details
After adding or discarding an asset, there might be some information left. That needs to be recorded or some new information is to fill. For this, you can edit and make changes to previously fed asset information.
This adjustment option allows you to change an asset record after the asset is added and the entries already transferred to General Ledger.
4. Transfer of Assets
The asset can be moved or transferred to a new location, or department, or from one person to another with the transfer option. The transfer of assets depends on the authorities whether they want to transfer the whole asset or the whole group of assets (multiple assets). It can be initiated in the asset management web application or from a handheld device as well.
5. Asset Reports
Through asset management application you can generate different reports related to the stock statement, received inventory expenses, entire inventory transactions, the life-cycle cost of the asset, assets due for return, movement or transfer of asset, depreciation report, discarded assets report, activity reports, etc.
These reports will give you entire information about the asset for the given period (you can set the time for reports to be generated, i.e., every month, or quarterly, or 6 months, or whatever your work environment allows you). you can also schedule reports via mail.
6. Disposal of Assets
Disposal of assets (individual or multiple assets) is also possible through the discard option. The total amount associated with a discarded asset is based on its net asset value.
Here, the reason for discard is also shown for future reference, and reports can be generated for the same.
Conclusion
With the implementation of the asset management process in your organization, you can check your asset details accurately. Also, you can view the information of a particular asset or particular equipment or a piece of an asset for a given period such as what responsibility that asset is holding for that particular time.
The cloud asset management solution allows you to process and verify the asset details in real-time. So, it is important to manage the asset management process to get a better hold over your assets.
Also Read: Reasons Why EMS (Emergency Medical Service) Agencies Need a Tracking Solution
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the purpose of asset management?
The purpose of the asset management process is to monitor and manage the assets acquired by an organization in a systemized manner. The benefits of the asset management process are the increase in productivity and efficiency of the organization to hold a better position and increase the return on investment.
2. What is the asset management process?
The asset management process is the systemized approach to plan, manage, and control all the asset-related information and track assets based on the information. This asset information includes the acquisition of an asset, current operational state of an asset, maintenance of assets, renewal of assets, and their disposal. The asset management process improves the operational potential of assets and reduces all the risks.
3. What are the benefits of asset management?
A proper asset management solution will provide the following benefits to an organization:
1. Making better decisions
2. Improves regulatory compliance
3. Improves reliability over assets
4. Long-term system integrity
5. Increased cost savings