Just as you count your inventory on a regular basis, counting your property, plant and equipment (PPE) items should be on the agenda as well at least once a year. The asset list may be long; they may be physically spread out on a big area, between different departments etc., so how do you know they all exist?

As you might expect, making sure that all those assets do exist is something that has to be done. Ensuring that all your assets on the balance sheet exist in reality is something that’s obvious, but for some reason fixed assets are those which we considered as “once bought, I know it exists”.

Well, the reality and practices has shown something different. It’s especially so with smaller equipment, which gets lost, broken easily, switched etc.

At least once a year, preferable closer to the year-end it’s recommended to perform full count for PPE items. List them up; make sure there are people responsible for determined groups of those items and as with inventory, let them know of the date the items are to be counted.

Obviously one crucial thing is to also label items counted for future references (unless done already of course in which case the assets are already easily identifiable).

So do pay the same care and attention to your PPE items as you do to your goods in stock.