Ten From the List, Ten From the Floor
The auditor ticks ten lines on your register and asks to see them. Then she points at ten things in the building and asks to find them on the register. Then she asks how this year’s disposals were authorised and what they fetched. What the asset record can show for each, what nobody can quietly rewrite, and where the trail runs thin.
The short version
An auditor tests a register in two directions, and they are different tests. From the list to the floor proves the things you claim exist; from the floor to the list proves you claim everything you have. AWRA answers the first well: every asset carries its custodian, location, a last-verified date with a name on it, and a movement history that has no edit button. It answers the second through the scanner, which tells you plainly when a tag or serial is not on the register. Disposals are recorded in two places, retirement in Assets and proceeds in Accounting, and the work before an audit is making sure every retirement has its matching disposal.
The auditor arrives on a Tuesday with your fixed asset register printed out, four hundred lines, and a red pen. She ticks ten lines without looking up and hands the sheet to the operations manager. A laptop issued to the finance assistant. A projector in the boardroom. A generator at the warehouse. A motorbike out with a field officer. She would like to see each one, today, with its tag.
After lunch she reverses the walk. She stands in the corridor and points: that printer, that water dispenser, the second monitor on the programme manager’s desk, the server in the cupboard. Find those on the register, please. One of them has a tag. Two have serial plates. One has nothing at all.
Then she opens her laptop and asks the third question. Six assets left the register this year. How was each disposal authorised, who agreed it, and what did it fetch?
Every external audit, most internal ones and many donor monitoring visits ask some version of all three. The organizations that struggle are rarely the ones with poor records, but the ones whose records answer a different question.
Two samples, two different claims
Auditors call the first test existence and the second completeness, and the distinction matters because a register can pass one and fail the other completely.
List to floor: existence
- Starts from a line on the register and asks to see the thing.
- Catches assets that are on the books and gone: stolen, scrapped without paperwork, sold by someone who left.
- Overstates nothing once it passes, so it protects the balance sheet figure.
- Fails loudly: a missing generator is obvious to everyone in the room.
Floor to list: completeness
- Starts from a thing in the building and asks to find its line.
- Catches assets that are owned and unrecorded: donated equipment, items expensed at purchase, kit bought on a project budget.
- Protects custody rather than value: an unrecorded laptop has no custodian and can leave unnoticed.
- Fails quietly: an unregistered printer works perfectly well and nobody misses its line.
Most preparation goes into the first direction because it embarrasses people. Management-letter findings tend to come from the second, because nobody has looked.
List to floor: what each line already knows
When the auditor ticks a line, the asset record in AWRA can answer four questions before anyone stands up: who holds it, where it is meant to be, when someone last confirmed it was there, and every change of hands since it was registered.
| What she asks | Where the answer sits | What it carries |
|---|---|---|
| Who has it? | The current custodian on the asset | A named person, or the asset is available and unassigned |
| Where should it be? | Department, warehouse and location | The last place a movement put it |
| When was it last seen? | Last verified, on the scan screen and the asset reports | A date or “Never”, with the verifying movement naming who checked it |
| How did it get there? | The movement history | Every check-out, transfer, relocation and return, each with who recorded it and when |
The last-verified date is the one to watch. It is written by one action only, Verify, which you run from the asset’s page or by scanning its tag. Verifying records a movement like any other: the person, the time, the condition they found it in, a new location if it was somewhere else, and optionally photographs and a signature. If your workspace requires GPS for verification, the movement carries a position too. The asset’s status and custodian are left alone, because confirming a thing exists is not the same as moving it.
So when the laptop is produced, verify it there and then, from a phone. The sample becomes part of the trail rather than a note on her working paper, and next year’s auditor will see this year’s check.
The motorbike that is not in the building
A sampled asset out with a field officer is not a failure. The record shows who took it, when, and when it is due back. What turns it into a finding is an expected return date that passed months ago, which the Overdue Returns report lists before she does. Recall it or extend the return with a movement before the visit, not during it.
An asset that genuinely cannot be found should be marked lost, which records who said so and when. If it turns up later, Recover brings it back with a movement saying where it was found, so the history does not end on “Marked lost” for a machine back on someone’s desk.
Why a verification date only means something if somebody schedules the walks is argued in A Register Is a Rhythm, Not a Record, and which movement actions prove what is set out in Nine Actions, and What They Prove.
Floor to list: the tag, the serial, and the thing with no label
The reverse walk is a scanning exercise. The scan screen matches what it reads against three things: the asset code, the barcode and the serial number. A tagged printer comes straight up with its custodian, location and last-verified date. A monitor with no tag but a serial plate can be found by typing the serial, and the register search also matches name, model and manufacturer when the plate has worn away.
When nothing matches, the screen says so: no asset matched this scan code. That sentence is the finding, and it is better that you see it on a rehearsal walk than that she does. The server in the cupboard with no label at all is the hardest case, and the honest answer is usually that it was bought on a project budget, expensed, and never registered.
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Register it, and do not pretend it was always there
Registering an asset writes a registration movement dated the day you do it. The purchase date is a separate field you fill from the invoice. An auditor reading the record sees an item bought two years ago and registered last week, which is the truth, and a late registration with a documented reason reads far better than one that looks backdated.
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Give it a custodian on the way in
An asset registered as available and left there has a line and still nobody responsible for it. Check it out to the person whose desk it sits on.
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Print the label before you walk away
The label is generated from the record with a barcode or QR code. A tagged asset is one the next walk finds in a second.
A scan that finds a retired asset is its own kind of result: the record comes up with a retired status. Something the books say was disposed of is still in the building, and her next question will be about the disposal file.
What nobody can quietly rewrite
An auditor’s real interest is not in what the register says today but in whether it could have been made to say it the night before. Four properties of the asset record are worth knowing well enough to explain.
- Movements are not editable. There is no screen or API call that changes or deletes a recorded movement. A wrong transfer is corrected with another movement, and both stay in the history.
- Editing the asset cannot move it silently. Since October 2026, changing the status, custodian or location on the edit form is recorded as the matching movement, under the same permissions and approval rules, or refused with the action that does record it. A retired asset cannot be edited back into service.
- An asset with history cannot be deleted. Once anything beyond its registration has happened to it, delete is refused and the user is told to retire it instead. A freshly registered duplicate can be deleted, and it goes to the trash, where it can be restored.
- A signature is fixed once the movement is decided. A custodian’s mark can be added while a movement is pending, and is locked the moment it is approved, completed or rejected.
Around all of that, every change made through the product is written to the audit log with the person, the time, their IP address and the record touched. Exports are logged the same way, so the log also shows who pulled the register PDF the evening before the visit.
The register is only as credible as the answer to one question: could it have been made to say this last night?
How each disposal was authorised, and what it fetched
This is where most registers are thinnest, and it is worth being precise about how AWRA splits the job. A disposal is recorded in two places, by two kinds of people, for two reasons.
One disposal, two records
Assets
The operational exit
- Retire, with a written reason up to 120 characters
- Photographs of the item and its serial plate, optional
- Custodian cleared; the asset can no longer be moved or verified
- Approval first, when your policy covers retirement for that asset
- Depreciation stops from the month of retirement
Accounting
The financial exit
- Dispose of, on the asset’s depreciation record
- Date, proceeds, and the account the money went into
- Outstanding depreciation charged first, then book value worked out
- One journal for cost, accumulated depreciation, proceeds and gain or loss
- An audit entry recording the proceeds and the gain or loss
Retiring an asset does not post its disposal. Its depreciation record shows a warning until someone in finance disposes of it.
Authorisation sits on the retirement. With the default settings, retiring is one of the actions that needs approval for a high-risk asset: one marked high or critical risk, one whose cost is at or above the threshold you set, or one in a category or asset type you have listed. You can widen that to every asset, or flag an individual asset to require approval for every movement. An approved retirement records who approved it and when; a rejected one records who rejected it and why. Below the threshold, the retirement is recorded straight away under the retiring user’s name.
What it fetched sits on the disposal. The figure the auditor wants is the gain or loss, and the system works it out rather than asking for it. Before taking the asset off the books, it charges any months of depreciation still owed, so the book value is right on the day.
A laptop sold to a staff member
One journal carries all four lines under a single disposal reference, so the auditor can trace it from the register to the ledger.
The disposal refuses the dates that would make that figure wrong: a date in the future, a date in a closed period, and a date on or before a month that already carries depreciation. For the accounting side in more depth, read The Register and the Depreciation Ledger, Side by Side.
The preparation that matters here is reconciliation. Pull every asset retired this year and every disposal posted this year, and match them. A retirement with no disposal is cost still sitting on your balance sheet for something you no longer own. An asset that was never given a depreciation record has nowhere in the product to record what it fetched, so its proceeds live in the receipt and the board minute; put both in the file.
Pulling the pack the week before
What to export, and what each one answers
- The register PDF from the asset list, filtered by department or location to match how she will walk the building.
- The Movement History report filtered to verifications and the audit period, exported to CSV, showing who verified what and when.
- The Lost / Damaged report, listing everything currently lost or damaged with its last-verified date.
- The Overdue Returns report, cleared or explained before the visit.
- The Movement History report filtered to retirements, beside the disposal journals from the Fixed Asset Register in Accounting.
- The approvals queue, empty or explained: a retirement still pending is a disposal nobody has authorised.
- The audit log for the asset module across the period, for the edits and exports around the year end.
One practical tip: the register PDF leaves out the last-verified date, which the report exports include. The dashboard’s count of assets verified in the last thirty days shows how far behind you are, and the verification export gives the dates.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- A verify action with a name and a time on it, from the asset page, the scan screen or a phone, with condition, optional photos, signature and GPS that policy can make compulsory.
- Scan matching on asset code, barcode and serial number, with a plain message when nothing on the register matches.
- A movement history with no edit or delete, edits to status and custody recorded as movements, and delete refused for any asset with history.
- Retirement with a required reason and optional photos, approval by risk, value, category or type, and approver or rejecter recorded with the time.
- Disposal with proceeds, book value and gain or loss worked out, journalled and written to the audit log, refusing future dates and closed periods.
- Every change and every export written to the audit log with the person, time and IP address.
More we can add to your workspace
- A verification campaign: a location or department opened for checking, assigned to a person, worked through by scanning and closed with a list of what was not found.
- A last-verified column and a not-seen-since filter on the register export, so one sheet shows every line that has not been checked in a year.
- A found-on-the-floor record, capturing an unmatched tag or serial during a walk as an item to resolve rather than a message on a screen.
- Retirement and disposal as one step, with proceeds, buyer and the disposal journal recorded against the retirement itself.
- A retired-versus-disposed reconciliation, listing every retired asset beside its disposal entry and flagging the ones without one.
- A second approver required on asset retirements, so the person who records a retirement is never the person who approves it.
- Field-by-field history of edits to an asset’s name, serial number and cost, showing the value before and after.
Where we point you to a specialist
- We do not value an asset for sale. What a disposal ought to fetch is a matter for a valuer or your disposals committee; we record what it did fetch.
- We do not decide whether a loss is written off, recovered from a person or claimed on insurance. That is a decision for your finance policy and your auditors; the record shows who marked it lost and when.
Any of these can be added to your workspace, and the reconciliation and the second approver are small pieces of work that change the disposal file the most.
The second and third lines are the same build from two directions: the existence walk and the completeness walk, each producing a list the auditor can take away.
Anything above that you need, we can build for you
Everything listed above as something we can add describes what ships in the standard product today — it is a starting point, not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for whatever you just read about. One qualification so this is worth what it claims: a small number of things on this blog we deliberately leave to a specialist rather than build — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped additions, which are the ones readers ask for most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsFive questions to answer before she arrives
How many assets show a last-verified date older than a year, or “Never”?
What you will usually find
More than half, if verification has only happened when something went missing.
What to do about it
Walk the high-value and high-risk ones first and verify them as you go. The sample is drawn from the whole register, so the oldest dates are where it will land.
Which retirements this year have no matching disposal in Accounting?
What you will usually find
At least one, usually scrapped equipment with no proceeds.
What to do about it
Dispose of it with zero proceeds. The cost and depreciation come off the books and the loss is recorded, which is the true position.
Who approved each retirement, and was it the same person who recorded it?
What you will usually find
Several were below the approval threshold and approved by nobody.
What to do about it
Decide whether that was the policy. If it was not, lower the threshold or extend approval to every retirement now, not after the finding.
Can we find five untagged items from a walk through the building?
What you will usually find
One or two come up by serial number; the rest do not.
What to do about it
Register them today with their real purchase dates, tag them, and trace how they arrived so the next one is caught at the door.
Is anything lost that is still sitting on the books at full value?
What you will usually find
Lost assets that were never disposed of in Accounting.
What to do about it
Agree the write-off with finance and record it, so the register and the balance sheet tell the same story.
See the register an auditor can walk
Custodians, verification, scanning, movement history and the route to disposal, in one asset module that keeps its own trail.
Explore the fixed asset registerFrequently asked questions
What is the difference between an existence test and a completeness test on an asset register?
An existence test starts from lines on the register and asks to see the physical assets, proving that what you report actually exists. A completeness test starts from things in the building and asks to find them on the register, proving that you have recorded everything you own. A register can pass one and fail the other.
How does AWRA record that an asset was physically seen?
The Verify action records a verification against the asset with the person, the time, the condition found and, where your settings require it, a GPS position. It can carry photographs and a signature, and it updates the asset’s last-verified date. It can be run from the asset page, by scanning the tag, or from a phone.
Can someone change an asset’s movement history after the fact?
No. Recorded movements have no edit or delete option, and a mistake is corrected by recording another movement, so both remain visible. Changes to status or custody made through the edit form are recorded as movements too, and an asset with any movement history cannot be deleted, only retired.
Where are disposal proceeds and the gain or loss recorded?
On the asset’s depreciation record in Accounting. Disposing of it takes a date, the proceeds and the account they were received into, charges any depreciation still owed, works out the book value and the gain or loss, and posts one journal for all of it. The disposal is also written to the audit log.
Does retiring an asset post its disposal automatically?
Retiring an asset in the Assets module stops its depreciation and takes it out of circulation, but the disposal is a separate step in Accounting. Until it is done, the depreciation record shows a warning that the asset was retired and still needs disposing of. Reconciling the two lists before an audit is the most useful preparation.
What happens when a scanned tag is not on the register?
The scan screen reports that no asset matched the code. Scanning matches the asset code, the barcode and the serial number, and the register search also finds assets by name, model and manufacturer. An item that still cannot be found should be registered with its real purchase date and tagged.
