Your business assets are essential as they help you run your business, increase your business’ value, and generate revenue. You can even use your business assets to lower your tax bills and increase your savings. However, if you don’t manage your assets properly, you may risk inefficiency and losses for your business.
Here are some ways to manage your business assets:
1. Calculate Asset Depreciation
One way to avoid dreadful situations in your business operations is to understand asset depreciation and fixed assets. Understanding these aspects in your business can help you better manage your assets.
When you say fixed assets, these are tangible assets you own and use to obtain profits. You can use these assets for more than a year, so you wouldn’t want to cash these assets. Although fixed assets don’t immediately affect your profit, they still play an important role. For instance, a car your company uses for its daily operations is a fixed asset.
However, this fixed asset can depreciate as time passes. Depreciation in business refers to the declining value of your asset from the time you bought it. Moreover, depreciation is a loss in a year and an expense in your business’ profits. When a car has lost its productivity due to physical damage, asset depreciation occurs.
If you don’t calculate the depreciation of your business’ assets, it may affect your business operations and employees’ productivity. On the other hand, if you understand how your assets depreciate, you’ll know when to make purchases. You can also avoid repairs for these assets that may only add up to your business expenses. This may affect your cash flow without you realizing how. That’s why you may want to get advice on how to improve your business cash flow concerning your assets.
2. Use Automated Asset Management Solution
Aside from understanding your assets, you should also keep up with the fast-moving technology. This means you may need to use automated asset management software instead of manually doing it. Asset management involves documenting and tracking all assets your business owns. You also need to document the maintenance history of your assets and who are utilizing them. All of these can easily be achieved with automated asset tracking and inventory.
Moreover, you can have the following benefits when you automate your asset management solution:
- You can save time from making changes to each document because automated asset management allows you to do this without much fuss. Instead of wasting time looking for the documents, editing, and re-printing them, you can better use your time for more essential tasks.
- Centralizing your asset data is also achievable with automated asset management. All authorized personnel can easily access such to make workflow faster.
- Moreover, automating the tracking and inventory of your assets can reduce maintenance costs. Since you can easily pull relevant data, you can schedule or make checklists when these assets need preventive maintenance. As a result, you can increase the longevity of such assets.
3. Safeguarding Assets
Another essential way to protect your asset is to safeguard them from misappropriation. Whether your business is big or small, asset misappropriation may occur. The best way to combat this is to enhance your operational and financial controls.
You can prevent asset losses by implementing the following procedures that minimize possible internal control problems:
- Examine Your Employees: Before hiring your employees, verify their references by conducting a background check. That way, you can identify if they’re prone to white-collar crimes such as asset misappropriation. With such, you can avoid hiring people who might be the cause of your asset losses. You can fast-track the background check by hiring a third-party service provider such as Instant Record Check to examine an employee’s criminal record. This will make the hiring process significantly more efficient and cost-effective.
- Check Supporting Documentation: Before you authorize a transaction, such as releasing checks for purchasing supplies, you must read supporting documents. Verify the employees and vendors involved in such transactions.
- Assign Duties Appropriately: Choose different people to conduct a different task. For instance, one employee should handle recording and handling cash and another to receive, pay, and order supplies. Most importantly, you should also assign a different person to verify each transaction for accuracy and cross-referencing.
Final Words
Asset management is vital to keep track of your business assets such as investments, equipment, and vehicles. Through asset management, you can manage risks that may arise from improper management of your assets. You can reduce your business expenses, improve your goods and services, and boost productivity with proper asset management. That’s why considering the mentioned tips above is beneficial for your business.