Archive for General News

Asset Discovery is Key to Understanding Business Risk

Organizations know the value of Business Intelligence (BI) in monitoring sales performance, analyzing the quality of manufacturing processes or customer service and tracking financial indicators. How many, however, are leveraging this technology to assess the corporate risk associated with the tough capital investment decisions now required across an organization’s fixed asset base?

With the uncertain economic outlook, senior managers can be prone to rewriting investment strategies and business plans while under pressure to make rapid changes. There are, of course, huge risks associated with such decisions – from escalating maintenance costs to business damaging equipment downtime.

Irrespective of financial conditions, organizations cannot risk making hasty changes to capital investment strategies.  It is the use of BI to pull together information from fixed asset registers, maintenance systems and finance that will deliver the trusted, real time information required to identify opportunities for asset savings and, critically, predict the risk/reward associated with reining in investment today.

How automated Maintenance Management software will reduce your overall maintenance costs and increase workforce efficiency…

The job of maintenance engineers within an organization is to troubleshoot technical problems for equipment and systems and to quickly resolve any issues. They perform routine maintenance to ensure proper and efficient functioning of equipment and systems and have to read blueprints and product manuals to diagnose problems, then using a variety of tools to make adjustments or repairs. In some cases, work may require calling manufacturers or ordering parts and supplies to resolve technical issues.

All this information ie: location and condition is then logged by the engineer into a system for reference which could be a manual entry system such as an Excel spreadsheet, which is not only time-consuming but potentially inaccurate, due to human errors which can occur with different people logging into the one system repeatedly, making room for no control over mistakes or changes occurring.

Consequently, many organizations are looking to invest in a software product that makes significant improvements within their day-to-day equipment maintenance and reporting.  Utilizing maintenance management software enables organizations to improve performance levels, by allowing the workforce to update, check and amend necessary maintenance within the organization.  Additional benefits associated with maintenance management software are the reporting features available to its users, like maintenance plans, showing maintenance history and scheduled works, overdue work orders, parts used/required, quantities, dates, meter readings and labor costs. 

To find out more about benefiting from a CMMS, read how Monckton Coke and Chemical Company (MCCC)  changed once it installed one.

How to simplify your depreciation this tax season

There are many different methods of depreciation and if your organization uses more than one method or if you use spreadsheets to calculate depreciation, you may find you have a hard time completing this task without errors. 

Fixed asset accounting software can make calculating depreciation both quick and easy without requiring the users to add any formulas.  Depreciation methods should be preloaded in your software, allowing you to easily set depreciation methods for assets and for asset lives to be defaulted for each book based on any defined asset category.  A specialist system will also let users forecast depreciation as far into the future as desired and can recalculate the current period’s depreciation to reflect updates in the asset register. 

 By completing your depreciation in a specialist system with pre-set formulas you avoid the risk of incorrectly entering formulas and the risks associated with having spreadsheets that can be accessed by multiple people without a clear audit trail.

Are limited IT resources slowing down your asset management?

With many organizations paring back internal IT resources, many business managers are finding they have to wait months to get access to critical IT skills.  This backlog of need can cause managers to struggle with meeting compliance-critical upgrades of financial software, such as fixed asset management.  It is often critical that these upgrades are completed on time. 

Some are finding the answer to be a third party hosted solution, which allows for compliance critical upgrades to be delivered within days rather than months.    A hosted solution can be set up to ensure automated upgrades, which will mean your software will always be up to date – a key consideration for compliance requirements, particularly in relation to the latest IFRS and SORP regulations affecting organizations.   

If your IT department is overburdened and unable to meet your needs, a hosted solution may be the answer.  It will allow you to complete your job and it also removes some of the pressure from your IT staff, freeing them to work on other issues.

The Key Drivers for Implementing a Fixed Asset Solution

Organizations that are using cumbersome spreadsheets to manage an ever growing asset register constantly struggle to address a variety of issues surrounding the accountability and traceability of their asset base.  Below are some of the areas in which businesses that do not have a comprehensive fixed asset management system are failing to address properly:

• Concerns about accurately meeting corporate governance requirements
• Inaccurate depreciation calculations
• Lack of audit trail and overall security
• Inability to link ‘parent/child’ assets or conduct asset splits, batch disposals, etc
• Unable to meet historical reporting and forecasting requirements
• Wasted time on tedious tasks such as data entry
• Lack of confidence in data integrity

Organizations need to address the above issues in order to properly manage their fixed assets and therefore these factors often become key drivers for implementing a new solution, such as a specialist fixed asset management system.

What a document management system should do for you

A document management system can be a great addition to your software tools to help manage all of the information about your fixed assets.  There are five things that you should make sure a system can do for you.

1.  Manage all documents associated with assets, inventory items, leases and capital projects such as your purchase orders, invoices, contracts and asset/inventory images
2. Allow multiple users to access documents simultaneously.  This will eliminate the need for multiple hard copies.
3. Let you browse all documents or search by document type, author and/or date of attachment
4. Permit you to upload an unlimited number of documents.
5. Help you reduce auditing costs with quick and easy document retrieval.

 If you implement a system that has the five features above, you should find that you’ll experience significant time savings and your document management will be incredibly simple.

Don’t forget technical support when you purchase software

The need for technical support with new software is inevitable.  Whether your questions are simple or complex you will need to have access to someone who can answer them.  Make sure when you purchase new software, that you are familiar with the services included in your package.  Some questions you should ask about the support for your purchase include:

• What are the hours of operation?
• How quickly are calls/emails answered?
• Are calls/emails tracked or logged?
• Does the supplier offer a Service Level Agreement?

 Technical support is a fundamental aspect of the total package of your software purchase, so you want to make sure you are confident with the level and quality of support to which you will have access.

Administrative services to consider for your hosted solution

When reviewing hosted solutions, you should check to see if your software provider and data center offer the following services, which you may require:

• Patch and upgrade administration
• Performance administration
• Data integrity and security
• Capacity planning and sizing
• Routine scheduled maintenance

Most reputable data centers will include some of these various administrative services in addition to the physical security and managed data backup services they provide.

How to calculate ROI for your fixed asset management software purchase

In order to calculate ROI, you must first determine the costs and benefits.  So, you will need a measurable baseline of your current system/procedures for comparison.

First, calculate the time/money you spend on fixed asset accounting.  This should includes all duties involved in the process such as:

• Data entry and verification
• Report generation
• Accounting events entries
• Monthly and yearly book closings
• Journal postings
• Conducting physical inventories

 Second, subtract the costs associated with your current fixed asset management procedures from actual costs associated with purchasing a fixed asset management software system.   When calculating costs, be sure to include all costs involved and not just those associated with the actual software.  You should consider:

• Salaries and benefits of employees involved in the project (daily or hourly, depending on the project scope)
• Employee overhead, ie: supplies and equipment
• Direct costs
• Lost opportunities

 For more about Calculating the ROI for your Fixed Asset Management Software Purchase, request our free whitepaper here.

1 way to increase the accuracy of your audits

Using barcode technology, you can increase the accuracy of your physical audit and increase your efficiency.  Barcodes can provide a much more accurate audit than the use of lists and the pencil & paper technique.  They remove the inherent human error of incorrectly identifying assets and that of incorrectly transcribing information from sheet to your fixed asset register.

With the use of barcodes and a scanner there is a confirmed electronic trail of items that have been found.  The information from the audit can be synchronized back to the asset register with the complete audit trail in real time.  

And with the advances in labels available, you don’t have to be concerned about the sustainability of labels, as they can now be made in vinyl, white polyester, ultra shield with high resistance to UV exposure, and metal in addition to other materials.   So you can apply labels that can withstand the same wear and tear as your fixed assets.