An asset register that lists what you own is an inventory. An asset register that also holds condition and expected life is a financial instrument, because it can answer the only question anybody senior will ever ask about the estate: what is this going to cost us, and when. Most small organizations have the first and think they have the second. This page sets out the difference, the four fields that create it, and how condition and age turn into a replacement profile and an annual sinking fund, with the free sheet on this site working the arithmetic from your own numbers.
The four fields facilities asset management software has to keep
What it is, where it is, what condition it is in, and how long it should last. Identity, location, condition and expected life. A register with the first two is an inventory and can tell you what exists. Add the second two and the same list can tell you what falls due and when, which is a different kind of document entirely. The failure mode is almost always condition: recorded as free text, or recorded once at survey and never again, it cannot be added up, and a register whose condition column cannot be added up cannot produce a replacement profile however complete it looks.
From condition and age to a replacement profile
Take the replacement value of the base, its average expected life, its average age today and what you currently set aside each year. On the replacement sheet here, $2.4m of assets over a 15 year life needs $160,000 a year; setting aside $90,000 covers 56% of it and leaves a $70,000 annual gap; the base is nine years into fifteen, so 60% of its life is consumed, and $800,000 of replacement falls due within five years. That last figure is the one worth putting in front of a finance director, because it converts an abstract worry into a dated number they can plan against.
Why facility asset management sits apart from maintenance
Maintenance asks what is broken and who is fixing it. Asset management asks what we own, what state it is in and what it will cost to keep owning it. The two share a record and answer to different people: the backlog figure lands with whoever schedules the technicians, and the replacement figure lands with whoever writes the capital plan. Products bundle them and that is fine, but if you only get one of the two right, the asset side is the one whose absence is invisible for years and then arrives all at once.
Asset management software for facilities: keeping the register true after the survey
A register is accurate on the day it is surveyed and drifts from then on unless condition is updated as part of work that was happening anyway. That means the technician closing a work order records the condition they found, on the same fixed scale, in the same app, in one extra tap. Asset management software for facilities that makes this a separate task will produce a register that is re-surveyed every five years at full cost. The test in a trial is whether closing a work order can update the asset's condition without leaving the screen.
Questions people ask about facility asset management
What is the difference between an asset inventory and facility asset management?
An inventory says what you own and where. Facility asset management adds condition and expected life, which turns the same list into something that can answer what falls due and when. The addition is small to describe and is the whole of the difference in what the register is worth.
How do I work out what to set aside each year?
Divide the replacement value of the asset base by its average expected life, then compare that to what you actually save. On the sheet here, $2.4m over 15 years needs $160,000 a year, and setting aside $90,000 covers 56% of it, leaving a $70,000 annual gap. Age tells you the urgency: nine years into fifteen means $800,000 falls due within five.
Does facility asset management software have to be separate from the CMMS?
No, and it usually should not be, because the condition data has to come off the same work that maintenance is doing anyway. What matters is that condition is a fixed scale rather than free text and that closing a work order can update it without leaving the screen. Two systems that do not share that will produce a register that ages.
How often should the register be resurveyed?
As rarely as possible, which means keeping it current in between. A full resurvey is a project with a real cost, and organizations that need one every few years are usually the ones whose condition data was never updated as part of routine work. Ask any product how condition gets updated in the ordinary course of a week.
Is asset and facilities management software one product or two?
Usually one record serving two jobs. Maintenance asks what is broken and who is fixing it; asset management asks what you own, what state it is in and what it will cost to keep owning it. The two share a record and answer to different people.
Are facilities and asset management the same job?
They share one record and report to different people. Maintenance asks what is broken and who is fixing it. Asset management asks what you own, what condition it is in and what it will cost to keep owning it. In a small organization the same person does both, which is exactly why the register has to carry condition and expected life rather than identity and location alone: without those two fields the list cannot produce a replacement profile, and the question of what falls due and when has no answer at all.