70 Virtual Brochure – March 2025 6. Asset Management Introduction Following an asset management review in 2023/24, one of Uniac’s clients requested our input into the governance and controls relating to the management of assets. The questions asked included: • Is there a lower limit on formal asset tracking? Our client was considering setting £50k as a lower limit in this regard. • Do other HEIs use an asset tracking system? • What are the internal controls surrounding tracking systems? We undertake audits to assess institutions' asset management governance, systems and processes. Our experience of clients’ asset management has highlighted recurring issues: • Whilst most clients demonstrated effective controls and governance over the management of assets capitalised as fixed assets, the management of inventories of assets below the capitalisation threshold was less effective. • Deans and heads of departments are often named in an institution’s financial regulations/procedures as being responsible for the management of asset inventories for their area. In practice, the task of maintaining a log of assets is often delegated, usually to a finance or technical services officer, with the heads of department demonstrating limited awareness of the asset recording procedures in their department. • There would be different staff involved in asset management depending on the asset category, e.g. IT, Estates, art etc. An inconsistent approach to inventory recording was observed within institutions, with different departments choosing their own format or not keeping inventories up to date. • Some institutions were considering improving their current spreadsheet formats for inventories by investing in asset management software or using a module of an existing finance software. However, the intention was not always to roll out the new arrangements to the whole institution but to focus on the areas with the most assets. This would mean that inconsistent approaches would continue;. • Frequently, assets would be recorded on more than one register/inventory, e.g. on the fixed assets register and on a departmental inventory and on a record held for insurance purposes. Often, we found that the asset description would differ between these different registers and there would be more than one asset ID allocated which made it harder to track assets. • Governance of asset disposals often required improvement to ensure that a complete audit trail existed of the reason for the disposal, the approval to dispose and collection of income (where applicable). • Through drawing on our experiences and practices from across the Higher Education sector (and beyond), this briefing note compares thresholds, asset inventory formats and examples of controls in place. We also outline the importance of effective asset management and the factors to be considered when choosing an appropriate platform to be used for recording and managing assets.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTI5NzM=