What the Assets Are Worth Today

Until 14 October the value chart on the asset dashboard was an estimate, and it said so in small print: indicative. It took the cost of every asset and knocked 20% off for each year since purchase, whatever the asset was and whatever your depreciation said. A laptop on a three-year life and a building on fifty were drawn on the same slope. We have replaced it.

Net book value, as posted

The dashboard now shows net book value — the figure your ledger holds, not a rule of thumb. An asset with a depreciation profile is shown at its cost less the depreciation the monthly run has actually charged, plus any opening accumulated depreciation you brought in when you set the register up. Disposed and retired assets are left out. The same figure appears in the mobile app’s asset register and in the Asset Watch insight, so nobody is quoting a different number from a different screen.

The asset with no profile

The generator is the row worth a second look. It has no depreciation profile, so nothing has ever been charged against it. Rather than guess, the dashboard carries it at cost and counts it separately as carried at cost, with a link straight to setting up its depreciation. That count is a completeness check: when it reaches zero, every asset in the figure is being depreciated, and the dashboard and the ledger are describing the same register.

A figure that admits which assets it could not depreciate is more useful than one that quietly depreciates them anyway.

A trend you can line up with the books

Beside today’s figure — cost, accumulated depreciation, net book value — the dashboard draws a trend by day, week, month or year. Each point is the closing value at the end of that period, so the month-end points line up with the month-end balances your accountant reports. For the methods behind the profiles, see depreciation methods; for the register itself, the fixed asset register.

Due back in three days

Every morning at 09:19 the register now checks custody. Any asset checked out to a person with a return date inside the Reminder lead time — three days unless you change it, anywhere from 0 to 365 — or already past it produces a reminder by email and in the in-app bell. Administrators get the full list. Each custodian with an email address or a linked login gets their own items only: the field officer with the survey tablet sees one line, not the whole office’s.

Warranties, a month out

The same morning run looks for warranties ending within the new Warranty reminder lead time, thirty days by default, and tells administrators. A month is usually enough to get a failing printer or a noisy UPS seen under warranty rather than paid for. Both reminders are rows in notification settings under Assets — Asset Returns Due or Overdue and Asset Warranties Expiring — with separate email and in-app switches, so a workspace can keep the bell and mute the email. Custody chains covers how an asset is checked out to a person in the first place.

Frequently asked questions