One of my larger clients who I have acted for for a number of years runs a business with approaching 10,000 registered assets (and growing fast) which whilst each one is quite small (most are only £100-£250 each) it needs to be tracked properly as its 95% of their balance sheet value and 75% of their cost base. They have well and truly broken Xero fixed assets register.
Options seem to be:
1. Get a better accounting system. However what they do in xero works really well for the sales side of things and we are not desperate to break that as its thousands of small sales per month and it works quite sweetly and everyone understands it client side. We are below audit thresholds but its now a multimillion pounds t/o business so it might be time to grow up here. 15 years ago it was a spare bedroom enterprise so they are used to step changes now and again, but the client is of the "if it aint broke" mind set.
2. Get a bolt on fixed assets system which hopefully integrates to Xero. Retired assets are not well managed right now, but ideally it would be some sort scan system where the new ones get a label on them to identify, and the broken ones can then be scanned and removed when retired which would help finess the depreciaiton periods as we dont have a great handle of lifespans.
Any suggestions we can look at? It would be good to get a list to work through with the client rather than just shortlisting the ones which hit the top of google. Generally the better ones dont....
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to be honest, if I was going to take that route I would have said "Buy Sage Intacct" instead ;-)
For reference: https://www.sage.com/en-gb/sage-business-cloud/intacct/additional-financ...
nett-tracker will be ideal though
The Access Group had a separate fixed asset module (bought from Armstrong Consulting I think) which was really robust and was capable of being integrated with other systems. I even used it to calculate finance charges using the rule of 78; so it was very configurable. Not sure if Access have integrated it fully into their Dimensions software but worth an enquiry.
Dave
its a data centre. So its both one asset, several thousand working units (which are built day by day, they are expanding day in, day out), each made up of lots of small items, so you cant just ignore the small stuff and call it 'repairs'
You could reasonable cap one item ie "the data centre", a couple of thousand if applying multiple parts to each saleable bay, 10k (as they have) or indeed more. There are (or at least were when the FA register functioned) operational reasons for doing it how its done, even though it leaves an accounting headache.
The whole thing really needs a rethink, but first we need some decent software that can cope with volume and then work out how we can improve the systems for next phase in the business as there are lots of levels on this one in terms of accounting data vs tax data vs operational records vs time spent at the sharp end. There are a lot of trade offs all round.
For a business that size you might want to think about the threshold, £100 seems a little on the low side.
Thanks Chris Downing for the recommendation. There are a few companies with excess of 10,000 assets using nettTracker. There is a University in Asia with 40K assets on the asset register.
Any questions please feel free to e-mail me directly. [email protected]
An asset regsiter with 10,000 assets has been created and available to test on the demo account. (currently connected to Xero) It can be accessed here:
As an aside, if a client is putting "thousands of small sales per month" they are probably "breaking" Xero. Although there are no hard limits and I have not heard of Xero throwing anyone off, they don't recommend it for > 1000 of anything per month.
Sales works fine. We have that very well set up and integrated into the operational software that the business is run through and one of the main reasons we want to stick with Xero.
FA module wont run the depreciation. Its a bit like PAYE, its essentially a separate and OK for minor use but rather underdeveloped. its xero all over. Core product is good but all the constant add ons are underpar.
Yes I know what you mean. Why they can't fully develop PO and SO, and why we can only see 10 rows on the bank rec are symptoms of the product strategy. Yes it will cope with some heavy use but Xero never intended it to be for SMEs.
And the EU market must be huge, why don't they improve the VAT in the international edition?
Hi,
IRIS Assets may be worth a look. I'm pretty sure it would deal with the volumes required. I'd say IRIS Assets is very much a mid-market solution which would suit where your client sounds like they are. If assets are the only place where they are breaking Xero, then why change? The specific asset software option sounds the most appropriate option.
Regards
David
