Asset tracking in property management covers a number of asset classes; each can bring value to your properties
The most common are FF&E assets — fixtures, furniture, and equipment.
You’ll want to cover, for example, your major pieces of equipment as assets. And you’ll want to know when they were installed, what their replacement cost is, and what their useful life is.
Asset Tracking For Better Operating Budgets
From those three things, you can project depreciation schedules as well as project capital expenditures for your next budget year. You can look and see when things were installed. And you can see when their useful life would predict that they probably need to be replaced in the next 12 months.
Also, for equipment like appliances, you’re more effective if you know the details. It’s useful to know the manufacturer, model number, colorway, and other related information. All of that will make it easier to replace that piece of equipment and find the exact match for whatever it was you installed originally.
Further, if you can attach the warranty information to your asset tracking record, then you can track when something was installed and when the warranty is about to expire.
A lot of property managers and operators get frustrated by the fact that they have no way to know if the work order they’re getting is related to a piece of equipment that’s still under warranty. But with an asset tracking system, you can successfully track that.
Again, you’re most likely focusing on major pieces of furniture, fixture, and appliances. If you have furnished units, the furniture in that unit should be part of your asset tracking.
Tracking Personal Property On Site
Also, if you have personal property at the site, many states require you to file a personal property tax. That means computers, small tools, and a number of other things that are classifed as personal property. You should track all of those in an asset tracking system. When you have asset tracking in place, you can instantly produce reports that include the personal property that remains on site.
As a property turns or gets old, an asset tracking system also makes it easy to turn over the records and the history of what’s been installed at that property to the new owner. That makes the transition much much easier and makes for a better transaction.
Industry Standards Need an Update
For a long time, the industry standard for asset tracking has been either paper or Excel. You probably have a spreadsheet of all the assets that are on site. But even that doesn’t allow you to track what’s been changed out easily.
You have to have a very involved asset tracking spreadsheet to really make that work. It has to show your expenses over time, by equipment type, and project what your costs will be for the year based on the useful life of the in-place equipment.
It’s much more effective to have a platform like Leonardo247 with a built-in asset tracking system. You can enter a new asset into the system at any time. And you can note its various components and attributes and then use that to generate a report immediately. You can look forward 12 months and see what FF&E is reaching the end of its useful life and what you should start budgeting for.
How Asset Tracking Sets You Up For Success
With an advanced system like Leonardo247, you’ll actually know what to expect before you get into a unit to turn it. Because your asset tracking system is not just tracking the appliances and the equipment that’s on-site. It ties them into each unit at your property.
When a resident moves out, for example, will you have to replace the carpet? Will you have to replace the appliances that are in that unit? You can look unit by unit to see what assets are in that unit. You’ll also know what their costs were, what their expected useful life is, and what you can expect to replace in the next unit turn. That’s next-level unit turn functionality right there.
Tracking your assets has a number of additional benefits. Number one, you want to know what you have onsite at the property so that you have a complete preventative maintenance program for every piece of equipment. So you need an inventory of everything that you have anyway.
Secondly, an asset tracking plan will allow you to project costs for the upcoming 12 to 24 months by looking at the install date of equipment, expected useful life and replacement costs.
With this system in place, when it comes to budget time, you can look at the tracking information to determine how many carpets or or appliances you’ll have to replace. That’s really useful in avoiding problems with the budget later on when you have to replace something that you didn’t plan for.
Create and Automate Depreciation Schedules
Asset tracking helps with taxes as well. If you have advanced asset tracking capabilities like within Leonardo247, you can create depreciation schedules based on specific life cycles. You can automate all of that before tax return time so it’s easy to hand it over to your tax preparer.
It also allows you to track warranty information, which is something a lot of operators have trouble managing. When you have to change out of a piece of equipment, you can know whether or not that equipment is still under warranty when it breaks down.
With an asset tracking system, the information is all in one place. You just look up the piece of equipment you’re maintaining and the unit you’re in. You can even pull up an image of the warranty if you need to, or the cut sheet on how to repair that piece of equipment can all be at your fingertips with an asset tracking system.