The register itself
Cost, in-service date, method, useful life, salvage, accumulated depreciation, and net book value per asset — with the class and location it belongs to.
Platform · financial core
Most companies below $100M keep their fixed-asset register outside the accounting system, because QuickBooks and Xero have no real subledger for it. The register usually agrees with the trial balance, and it agrees by convention rather than by construction — which is a distinction an auditor cares about and nobody else notices until they do.
What it does
Cost, in-service date, method, useful life, salvage, accumulated depreciation, and net book value per asset — with the class and location it belongs to.
Monthly, staged for review before posting, across straight line, declining balance, units of production, and the MACRS conventions where tax basis differs.
Two sets of depreciation on one asset with the deferred tax difference visible, rather than a book register and a separate spreadsheet your CPA maintains.
Gain or loss computed and posted correctly, partial disposals handled, and transfers between locations or entities recorded rather than re-keyed as new assets.
Costs accumulated against a project and capitalised on a stated in-service date, which is where the interaction with job costing usually matters.
The subledger reconciles to the GL continuously. A break surfaces the day it happens rather than during the audit.
The register outside the ledger is usually accurate. Someone competent maintains it, the depreciation journal is posted monthly from it, and the numbers reconcile.
What it lacks is construction. There is no mechanism preventing the journal from being posted for a different amount than the schedule computed, no version history explaining why an asset’s life changed in 2023, and no way for anybody but its author to demonstrate that it is correct. In an audit that is a control deficiency regardless of whether the figures are right, and it typically appears in a management letter before it appears in a finding.
One asset with two depreciation bases — book for your statements and tax for the return — means two schedules that have to stay aligned on cost, disposals, and additions while diverging on method. Most companies maintain the book register and let their CPA keep the tax one, which works and means the deferred tax difference is only visible annually.
Holding both on one asset makes the difference continuously visible, which matters for interim reporting and for anyone modelling cash taxes. It also removes an annual reconciliation nobody enjoys.
Bringing an asset register in is one of the more straightforward conversions, because the data is structured and low-volume — a few hundred assets rather than a few hundred thousand transactions. What takes the time is agreeing the classes, confirming the in-service dates, and reconciling accumulated depreciation to the control account, which frequently surfaces a small historical difference nobody had noticed.
We would rather find that during conversion than have your auditor find it, and we label it rather than quietly absorbing it into the opening balance.
Limits
This is the accounting subledger. Barcode tagging, physical inventory counts, and maintenance scheduling belong in a maintenance or EAM system, and we integrate rather than replace.
ASC 842 right-of-use assets are related and different. We handle the resulting asset and liability; the lease determination and classification is a judgement we support rather than automate.
We hold the tax basis and compute tax depreciation. Preparing and filing the return is your CPA’s work and we produce the schedules they need.
Questions
Tell us how many assets and where the schedule lives, and we will scope what it takes.