Advisory — Fixed Assets
A review of the register you already have, read against your ledger and against the policy you say you apply. You get a written list of what does not hold, ranked, with what it would take to correct each one. Physical verification is included where the scope calls for it.
Most fixed asset registers were correct once. They drift — through a migration, a change of system, a year when the person who maintained it left, or simply through additions and disposals that were posted to the ledger and never carried through. By the time the difference is large enough for someone to ask about it, nobody in the finance team knows where it came from. This engagement establishes where it came from, and what it takes to put right.
The register total and the ledger balance differ, and the difference has been carried forward as a reconciling item for more than one year.
A single line reads “Plant and Machinery” against a large figure, and nobody can say what is inside it.
Last year’s audit produced an observation on fixed asset records, and the same observation is likely again.
Nobody commissions a register review for its own sake. It usually arrives attached to one of these.
A comment on property, plant and equipment records, or a query letter asking how the depreciation charge was arrived at. These arrive with a date attached and usually with a partner waiting.
Opening balance, additions, disposals, charge for the year, closing balance — agreeing to the ledger. A register assembled from composite lines and manual adjustments makes that hard to produce and harder to defend.
The register has come across from an old ERP or a spreadsheet, opening balances were accepted rather than reconciled, and the difference has been sitting there since.
Somebody has inherited the register, has been asked to sign off on it, and would rather know what is in it first.
An external party asks for an asset schedule and the schedule that exists cannot be sent without explanation.
The work is reading, reconciling and forming a view. It is done by a chartered accountant, not produced by a tool.
Not a bulk difference and a note. We trace the difference to its components — additions, disposals, depreciation, migration balances — so that what is left is a list of causes rather than a number.
Your capitalisation threshold, your classification convention and your depreciation basis, checked against what the register actually does. Where the two have diverged, we say where and since when.
What has been applied, what evidence sits behind it, and where a life or a residual value is carried without anything to point to. Where a technical assessment is needed, we say so rather than substitute a view for it.
Whether a componentisation judgement has been made at all, on what basis, and whether it has been applied consistently across the classes in scope.
Ageing, the split between projects in progress and projects temporarily suspended, the point at which items have been capitalised, and whether transfers out agree to additions in the register.
Three documents. They are written to be handed to somebody else — your auditor, your board, or whoever inherits the register next.
Every point we can support, ranked by how much it matters, each one saying what was found, what it affects, and what correcting it involves. Written so it can be handed to your auditor without translation.
The difference broken into its causes, with the workings, so the next person does not start from zero.
What your capitalisation, classification, depreciation and componentisation positions actually are, written down, so that next year the question is answered before it is asked.
It is not an audit and no opinion or assurance conclusion is expressed on your register or your financial statements. It is not a valuation; where a technical assessment of remaining life or a recoverable amount is needed, that comes from your engineer or a registered valuer and we read it rather than produce it.
And it is not available to our own audit clients. Section 144 of the Companies Act 2013 lists services a statutory auditor may not provide to a company it audits, and the restriction extends to that company’s holding and subsidiary companies. We check that before we scope anything.
Staged deliberately. A register in poor condition can absorb several times the effort a first look suggests, and neither of us benefits from discovering that halfway through.
Thirty minutes on what triggered this and what the register looks like. If a review is not what you need, we will say so.
A first pass over the register and the ledger to establish the size and shape of the problem. Fixed fee, fixed duration.
Only once the diagnostic has told both of us what is actually involved. You are free to take the diagnostic and stop.
CA Kiren Kumar K, FCA, ICAI membership number 223478, of Kiren & Co, Chartered Accountants, Bengaluru, FRN 031392S. The work described here draws on eight years of statutory audit of asset-heavy entities — cement, aerospace, automotive, hydraulics, healthcare and cable distribution — and on three years of technical accounting and audit-reporting work. More about the practice →
We read your existing register against your ledger and against the policy you say you apply. That means classification and how consistently it has been used, the capitalisation policy and threshold, useful lives and residual values and what supports them, whether significant parts have been separated, how capital work-in-progress has been carried and transferred, how disposals and write-offs have been routed, and whether the register can produce the movement schedule your auditor will ask for. What comes back is a written list of what does not hold, ranked, with what it would take to correct each one.
Physical verification is included when the engagement scope requires it. It is carried out at the asset locations.
In our experience it is rarely one cause. Additions posted to the ledger but never entered in the register, disposals removed from one and not the other, depreciation computed outside the register, opening balances carried over from a migration that was never reconciled, and assets held at group level but recorded locally are all common. The first phase of the work is establishing which of these is producing your difference, because the remediation is different in each case.
Schedule II to the Companies Act 2013 requires a significant part of an asset to be depreciated separately where the useful life of that part differs from the asset as a whole. Component accounting was optional for financial years beginning on or after 1 April 2014 and required for financial years beginning on or after 1 April 2015. ICAI's Application Guide reads the requirement as applying to the whole block of assets, not only to those acquired after that date. Whether a part is significant is a judgement about materiality, and the review looks at whether that judgement has been made, on what basis, and whether it has been applied consistently.
Schedule III requires capital work-in-progress to be presented with an ageing schedule and split between projects in progress and projects temporarily suspended. That requirement was introduced by the amendment notified on 24 March 2021 and has applied since financial year 2021-22. The review looks at how long items have been sitting, whether the split has been made and on what basis, whether the point of capitalisation has been applied consistently, and whether transfers out of capital work-in-progress agree to the additions in the register.
No. Section 144 of the Companies Act 2013 lists services a statutory auditor may not provide to a company it audits, and the restriction extends to that company's holding and subsidiary companies. If Kiren & Co holds your audit, or the audit of your holding or subsidiary company, we will tell you at the first conversation and we will not take the engagement.
The register as a workbook, the fixed asset ledger balances and depreciation charge for the period, your capitalisation policy if one is written down, and the prior year financial statements. If there is an audit observation or a query letter behind the request, send that too, because it tells us what the review actually has to answer.
Where a remediated register needs somewhere to live. Some organisations finish this engagement and want the corrected register held somewhere that keeps a movement schedule and an approval trail rather than a spreadsheet. Where that is useful, ProcureTrail is the system this firm works in and it can be configured for it. It is not required, it is not part of this engagement, and the review is the same either way. How the system fits together →
Send the workbook and the ledger balances. We will tell you what the difference is likely to be, what the first phase would cover, and whether a review is what you need at all.