The complete guide to fixed asset register: Template and best practices

Keeping an organised asset register might not sound like the most glamorous part of running a business. It certainly won’t be competing with your sales pitch or brand campaign for the spotlight. Behind the scenes however, a fixed asset register is a tool that can save you time, reduce risk and keep your finances clean.

Whether you’re a small business owner juggling receipts and equipment lists, or a larger organisation preparing for an audit, a fixed asset register gives you clarity over what your business owns, where it’s located, and how much it’s really worth. More importantly, it helps you make informed decisions about when to replace equipment, claim depreciation, and manage cash flow.

To make it easier, we’ve put together a free fixed asset register template that you can download and customise for your own use.

What’s included in our comprehensive template?

Our fixed asset register template is easy to adapt to your business needs. Inside, you’ll find fields for:

• Category: The type of asset, such as IT equipment, furniture, or vehicles
• Name: A short label to identify the item
• Asset code: A unique identifier, for example a serial number or internal reference
• Description: Additional detail about the asset
• Status: Whether it is in use, under maintenance, or retired
• Assigned to: The employee or department responsible for the asset
• Date assigned: When it was allocated or put into service

The template provides the structure you need to record and manage assets consistently, without overcomplicating the process. 

What is a fixed asset register?

A fixed asset register is a central “logbook” for your company’s long-term physical assets. Typically, it would log anything with a useful life exceeding one year and a value above your company’s capitalisation threshold (often £500-£1,000 for small businesses).

The register serves as a database that tracks each asset from purchase to disposal, creating a complete audit trail that satisfies both HMRC requirements and good business practice.

What assets should you include?

Your fixed asset register typically covers items like:

• Equipment and machinery: Manufacturing equipment, tools, kitchen appliances for restaurants, or specialised industry equipment
• Company vehicles: Cars, vans, trucks, motorcycles, and any other vehicles used for business purposes
• Office furniture: Desks, chairs, filing cabinets, conference tables, and reception furniture
• Computers and IT equipment: Laptops, desktops, servers, printers, tablets, and networking equipment
• Buildings and property: Owned premises, leasehold improvements, and significant structural modifications
• Intangible assets: Software licences, patents, trademarks, and other intellectual property (though these may require separate tracking)

It’s less about tracking your stock or consumables (that’s inventory management’s job) and more about ensuring the big-ticket items that keep your business running are properly recorded. The key distinction is permanence and value, if it’s something you expect to use for more than a year and cost more than your capitalisation threshold, it belongs in your asset register.

How do you determine your capital threshold? Your capitalisation threshold is simply the cut-off point where a purchase stops being treated as an everyday expense and starts being recorded as a fixed asset. Many businesses set this themselves, often with guidance from their accountant.

For example, you might decide that anything under £500 just goes through as an expense, but anything above that goes on your asset register. So a company van would make the list, but a stapler wouldn’t.

Why your business needs an asset register (and the costs of not having one)

You might be wondering if you really need an asset register. The short answer is yes, even if you’re a small business with only a handful of assets. Here’s why, along with what could go wrong without one.

The benefits of proper asset tracking

Accurate record-keeping and financial reporting 

An asset register helps you keep track of purchases, locations, and ownership. No more hunting through old invoices to remember when you bought that printer, or worse, accidentally buying equipment you already own because you forgot about it. This organisation directly impacts your balance sheet accuracy and helps you understand your true business worth.

Streamlined audit preparation 

When auditors come calling, having an up-to-date register saves you hours of stress and potentially expensive professional fees. Instead of rummaging through filing cabinets or paying your accountant to reconstruct your asset history, you can hand over a neatly organised spreadsheet that ticks all the boxes. This preparation can reduce audit costs by 20-30% according to many accounting firms.

Insurance coverage and claims 

If you ever need to make a claim, your insurer will expect to see evidence of what you own and its value. An asset register means you can provide it instantly, avoiding discrepancies that could result in reduced payouts. Many businesses discover during claims that they’re underinsured simply because they lost track of their assets’ total value.

Tax compliance and depreciation accuracy 

Assets lose value over time, and calculating depreciation correctly is crucial for tax reporting. The register helps you claim the maximum allowable depreciation, potentially saving thousands in corporation tax. It also ensures you don’t accidentally overstate the value of your business on your books, which could lead to HMRC penalties.

Strategic decision-making 

Beyond compliance, your asset register becomes a planning tool. It helps you identify when equipment might need replacing, budget for capital expenditure, and understand the true cost of running your business. You can spot patterns, perhaps your laptops consistently fail after three years, suggesting you should budget for replacements rather than expensive repairs.

The hidden costs of poor asset management

Without proper tracking, businesses commonly face:

• Duplicate purchases when staff buy equipment the company already owns
• Missed depreciation claims that could have reduced tax bills
• Insurance shortfalls discovered only during claims
• Audit delays and additional fees while scrambling to provide documentation
• Poor budgeting decisions based on incomplete asset information

Even small businesses gain peace of mind and financial accuracy by using one, often saving more in avoided mistakes than the time investment costs.

Step-by-step implementation guide

Using the template effectively requires more than just downloading and filling it in. Here’s how to implement it properly:

Phase 1: Preparation and setup (Week 1)

• Download and customise the template: Start by grabbing your free copy from this page. Review the column headers and adjust them to match your business needs.
• Establish your capitalisation policy: Decide your threshold for asset capitalisation. Many small businesses use £500-£1,000 as the minimum value, below which items are expensed immediately rather than capitalised. Document this policy as it affects both your accounts and tax reporting.
• Gather existing documentation: Collect purchase receipts, invoices, warranty documents, and any existing asset lists. Don’t worry if records are incomplete, you’ll build better records going forward.

Phase 2: Initial data entry (Weeks 2-3)

• Input your current assets systematically: Work through your business location by location or department by department. Be as thorough as possible so your records are accurate from the start. Include estimated values for older assets where receipts are missing, but mark these clearly for future verification.
• Photograph your assets: While not included in the basic template, consider taking photos of significant assets and storing them in a linked folder. This helps with insurance claims and theft reporting.
• Verify and cross-reference: Check your entries against insurance schedules, lease agreements, and recent purchases to ensure completeness.

Phase 3: Ongoing maintenance

• Establish update procedures: A register is only useful if it’s kept current. Ensure that you have a system in place to ensure that someone is updating your records every new purchase or asset.
• Schedule regular reviews: Make it part of your monthly or quarterly admin to update the register with new purchases, disposals, or changes in condition. Many businesses find that reviewing the register during monthly financial closes works well.
• Annual verification: Conduct a physical verification at least annually. This involves checking that assets listed in the register actually exist and are in the recorded locations. It’s also a good time to assess conditions and update values if necessary.

Common mistakes to avoid

Even with the best intentions, businesses often make these costly errors when it comes to fixed asset registers:

Inconsistent categorisation

Many businesses start with good intentions but gradually develop inconsistent asset categories, mixing laptops under “Computer Equipment,” “IT Assets,” and “Office Equipment” within the same register, or lumping together items with vastly different depreciation rates and useful lives. This inconsistency makes financial reporting unreliable when you need to provide breakdowns by asset class and complicates depreciation calculations, especially when different categories should use different rates. 

Document your categorisation rules with specific examples, such as “All computing devices capable of running software applications go under IT Equipment > Computers, regardless of size or portability.” Create a standardised list and train all staff who might add assets to use exactly the same terminology, preventing the gradual drift that causes categorisation problems. 

Forgetting about improvements and modifications

When businesses upgrade or modify existing assets, they often treat these costs as immediate expenses rather than considering whether they should be capitalised, missing opportunities with common examples like adding RAM to computers, installing new software on servers, renovating office spaces or adding attachments to machinery. This oversight can significantly impact your financial position through tax implications where you might be expensing costs that should be depreciated over time, potentially overpaying tax in the current year, while your balance sheet may understate the true value of your assets. 

Create a systematic process for evaluating modifications by documenting all changes with detailed records of what was done, when, and at what cost, then systematically evaluating whether costs should be capitalised or expensed using your established criteria. When costs are capitalised, add them to the asset’s book value and adjust depreciation calculations going forward, ensuring your records accurately reflect the enhanced asset. 

Ignoring impairment

Businesses often continue depreciating assets at their planned rate even when circumstances change dramatically, such as when technology becomes obsolete, equipment breaks down beyond economical repair, or market conditions make assets worth significantly less than their book value. Failing to recognise impairment leads to overstated assets on your balance sheet, making your business appear more valuable than it actually is, while creating potential audit issues when auditors question why clearly obsolete assets still carry significant book values. 

Implement regular impairment reviews during your year-end process, systematically reviewing assets for signs of impairment while training staff to flag potential impairment when equipment breaks down, becomes obsolete, or circumstances change. For significant assets, consider professional valuations when impairment is suspected, and always record the reasons for any impairment write-downs to satisfy audit requirements. 

Poor disposal tracking

Many businesses fail to properly record when they dispose of assets, whether through sale, trade-in, scrapping, or theft, leaving assets on the register long after they’ve left the business and continuing to generate depreciation charges while inflating the balance sheet. Poor disposal tracking creates continued depreciation charges on assets you no longer own, reducing your taxable profits unnecessarily, while overstating balance sheet values that don’t reflect your true financial position. This leads to insurance problems when you’re paying premiums on assets you don’t actually have, tax complications when you can’t properly account for gains or losses on disposals, and audit difficulties when auditors can’t reconcile asset registers with physical counts. 

Establish disposal procedures that create a formal process which must be followed before any asset leaves the business, requiring documentation that captures disposal date, method, proceeds (if any), and proper authorisation. 

How onboarding can support better asset management

One of the most effective ways to keep your asset register accurate is to embed it into your onboarding process. New starters are often issued equipment on day one, whether it’s a laptop, a phone, or even a company car. If those allocations are recorded consistently at the point of onboarding, you reduce the risk of assets slipping through the cracks later.

By connecting asset allocation with your onboarding workflow, you create a clear chain of responsibility from the start. Employees know exactly which equipment they are responsible for, and HR or IT teams have a record that links each item directly to an individual. 

With onboarding software, you can automate much of that process within the same system you use for issuing contracts, collecting documents, and setting up new starter checklists. 

Integration with your accounting system

While our template works as a standalone tool, consider how it integrates with your broader financial systems. Keep regular backups of your register and consider cloud storage for accessibility. Also, integrating your asset register with your software can help you protect sensitive information, especially if it includes serial numbers that could be useful to thieves.

Download your free fixed asset register template

Ready to get organised? Download our comprehensive template today. It’s quick to set up, includes helpful guidance notes, and gives you an instant overview of your business’s physical assets.