Wisely Manage Assets in a Small Business
Every business needs to regularly keep track of tools and equipment since it allows you to increase profits and reduce the risk of loss. Creating a proper management plan helps you handle assets efficiently and effectively, especially when there are many disorganized assets, businesses may tend to lose track of things and ultimately lose money. Good asset management will help you control expenses, meet business goals, and production targets.
First ask yourself, have developed a good asset management plan? Are you having a hard time managing it? Do not worry! We hope that this article will help you process an effective asset management plan to better your decision-making.
Why is Asset Management Essential?
Asset management helps all businesses save money and avoid costly problems such as over purchasing and repairing assets. Essential methods include knowing where your assets are, who has them, and updates on their condition. Monitoring asset data not only provides location but influences employees to improve accountability and efficiency in how they manage valuable business assets. Also, provided with the proper information, divulging asset data will ensure financial statements accuracy and give companies a snapshot of where they can save money.
With an optimized asset management systems in place, companies can see essential information, make proper strategies, and prepare of future contingencies. To improve your asset management processes, first identify your common difficulties and research on methods to solve them.
4 Challenges of Asset Management
Many companies are learning first hand how much productivity is loss when there is no update on how assets are managed. For effective asset management, you must avoid these:
1. No Asset Information
No readily available information about how many assets your company owns or their status is a challenge. Without any interest on the condition of the assets, most likely their will be no information on maintenance needs until major repairs are required. Assets that requires inputs may force a business to over/under allocate expenses if no information is recognized, taking potential funds away from other business costs. Without the proper data, your company might be forced into sudden expenditures, resulting in diminishing returns.
2. Inaccurate Inventory Counts
Every business will encounter events where assets are lost, damaged, or stolen. Many times these events are difficult to identify and record properly. Without proper inventory auditing, there will be no signs if an asset went missing and no attempts to correct inventory values. Not knowing the number of functional, damaged, or impaired assets your company has will lead to inaccuracies on the company's balance sheets, which will over speculate future cash flows. The domino effect of difficulties occurring from logistics and operations to financials makes it hard to find which business assets are most functional and most liable.
3. Inaccurate Data
Information and data are the most crucial aspect of asset management. It shows every transaction and allows you to keep track of your asset, giving guidance on how a company should operate their business properly. However, risks can occur when your company is one of the several industries relying on handmade lists and spreadsheets. When the wrong data is entered, decisions based on that data will also be incorrect. This kind of human error occurs most commonly when there is no automated asset management system or easily recognizable method of correcting/auditing amounts. Mistaken amounts can result in over/under valuation of assets, unmaintained assets, and poor decision-making.
4. Lack of Asset Management System Optimization
Asset management is already difficult enough, and even more of a complicated process if your company is managing assets manually. With this archaic procedure, employees will need to use more time and effort to keep track of their business assets. Also, in the absence of an asset management system, there is a high chance of errors or mistakes in asset data.
How to Overcome Them
There are many factors that contribute to poor asset management. Think of a situation where you are running a small accessory shop. With thousands of items and no systems in place, you will most likely have no idea where your assets are and no methods to track them. If you do not give attention to your business assets, this sometimes results in your product being lost, damaged, or stolen. So how can we prevent this issue?
1. Keep an Up-to-date Record of Assets
Keeping current records with all of your assets' information is very important. Assets information is much easier to track by using notifications from an asset management system. If the function is available, when assets need replacement or maintenance, alerts send to the person in charge will keep your assets as up to date as possible.
2. Create an Organized Database
Databases are initially a hassle to create but provide much needed management benefits in the long run. Inputting all of your valuable assets and parts data is the most essential part of implementing a good asset management database. By maintaining up-to-date information, companies can use inventory databases to analyze the flow of asset usage and make more informed decisions regarding productivity and cost-cutting goals. In addition to reducing errors and discrepancies, a well maintained database should provide transparency and help your operations team with inventory collaborations. Your program needs to easily help with understand your assets' data at a glance.
3. Ensure Accurate Data
The more information that is available, the more informed your business will be. Most significantly, data assists with determining areas for improvement and how to enhance daily operations. Data accuracy insures your assets' statuses are reliable with very little margin of error. Avoid having inaccurate data by conducting audits of your inventory and using management tools that allow for quick adjustments of values (i.e. digital inventory management apps). Consistently updating inventory information is difficult but with many apps these days, the process is simplified to just a push of the button.
4. Take a Systematic Approach
Overcome the challenges of asset management by taking a systematic approach; understanding the big picture of what you want to achieve and how each function will support it. Setting a goal that aligns with everyone's interest and seeing how each process will lead to that goal helps with simplifying complexities and creating a map of what to do. Asset management software allows you to have actionable data, information which needs to be interpreted into the big picture. By choosing the right system, it will give your company an edge on the competition while maintaining due diligence.
Start An Effective Asset Management with BoxHero
• Save money and plan for demand spikes by checking your asset status in Analysis feature. Every time an asset comes in/out, you can record it as stock in/out. After recording transactions, you can speedily check them in History menu. With all of the inputted information, you can set low stock notifications to avoid depleted inventory amounts.
• Avoid the risk of theft or loss by locating assets in the right area. Recording this detail helps to quickly find an assets location as well as updates for relocation.
• Check the number of your business assets regularly and perform "Inventory Count" in BoxHero App. Scan barcodes to easily count assets and enter the current totals simultaneously to have updated quantities.
• Manage all of a company's tools and equipment by designing a barcode or QR code for the asset in BoxHero. Scanning these labels allows you to keep track who is using your asset, when they are been used, and where it is located.
• Create and share transactions with your team anywhere, anytime with the most efficient cloud-based asset management system, BoxHero.
Try BoxHero today and find out how easy managing assets can be!
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