Assets and equipment

Equipment in a venue usually lives in someone's head and in a chat thread: who keeps the second terminal, whose laptop is whose, how old the fridge is and what it is still worth on paper. The Assets section turns that into a register of everything the business owns, with two things a spreadsheet never has: a person responsible and depreciation — separately for the books and separately for tax.

Open: Admin panel → Assets (admin.cenaly.com/assets).

What this section is#

The register has one entity — an asset — with a class: equipment, phone, computer, vehicle, furniture, premises, intangibles (software, licences, rights) or other. The common fields are the same for every class — name, make and model, serial and inventory numbers, quantity, location, the employee responsible, status, a note and an event history — while phones, vehicles and computers get their own "Passport" block: extension and SIP username, plate and VIN, network name and OS. There are five statuses: Draft · In service · Idle · In repair · Disposed; a draft is an asset with no in-service date — it is already in the register, but it is not depreciated and does not appear in the statement.

What you need to start#

Nothing has to be installed: the section works in the browser, and so does label printing — through the ordinary print dialog.

Step 1. Create an asset#

The "＋ Add asset" button opens the card. It opens the way you prefer — as a window, a side panel or full screen (the choice is remembered) — and its density is a user setting: "minimal" leaves only the fields you cannot create an asset without, "full" shows every section at once.

Three fields deserve a note. "Quantity" is for a uniform batch on one invoice: ten identical chairs do not need ten cards. "How acquired" — "Purchase", "Lease", "Owner's contribution", "Gift", "Own production", "Stock-take surplus"; the field records the origin, while how to recognise it is decided by the policies. "Cost (net of VAT)" is the original cost without recoverable VAT: this is the depreciation base, and input VAT is recorded separately.

Step 2. Put it into service#

As long as an asset has no in-service date it is a draft. There are two ways in: the "In service since" field in the card, or the "Put into service" item in the row's "Actions" menu — then today's date is used.

At that moment the asset is given an inventory number like INV-000001, unless you set your own; depreciation runs from the in-service date, from the same or the next month, as the policy says. There is no way back: only a draft can be deleted. An asset that has been in service is not deleted but disposed of — its history stays in the register, and the statement shows it honestly as disposed.

Step 3. Accounting policies and country rules#

The same purchase lives in two sets of books under different rules, so the card has two sections. Accounting — "Recognition" ("Fixed asset (capitalise)" or "Expense immediately (low value)"), "Method" ("Straight line", "Declining balance", "Not depreciated"), "Useful life" in months, "Residual value", "Acceleration factor", "Depreciation start" ("From the month after commissioning" or "From the month of commissioning"), "Group".

Tax accounting — "Depreciate", "Expense immediately" or "Not deductible"; "Tax group / pool", "Method", a life or an "Annual rate, %", the start, a "Bonus depreciation, %" from the country's options and an "Accountant's note".

You do not have to fill this in by hand: the "Apply country rules" button takes the location's country, the asset class and its cost and fills in both policies, explaining underneath why it chose that. If the cost is not above the tax threshold, the asset is expensed immediately in both books (the threshold is inclusive: a cost exactly equal to it is expensed too). Nothing is applied silently — only when you press the button.

Country rules are a default, not your accountant's signature: the final word is theirs, and the tax section has a dedicated field for their notes.

Step 4. Monthly depreciation and the journal for your accountant#

The Depreciation tab has two axes: "Month" and "Book" ("Accounting" or "Tax"). For every asset in service the table shows "Start", "Method", "This month" (tagged "bonus" or "expensed"), "Accumulated" and "Net book value", with a "Total" per currency at the bottom.

Two buttons hand the same thing to your accountant — "Download month journal (JSON)" and "Download CSV" — and it is not a table dump but the whole month as proposed journal entries, in the same format payroll uses:

For the tax book the journal contains depreciation only — its other operations follow their own rules outside our side.

The movement statement for a period#

The Statement tab answers "what was there at the start, what came in, what went out, what is left". You set "From" and "To", pick a book, and for every asset you see cost and accumulated depreciation at the start, additions (commissioning and upgrades), disposals, the charge for the period, the closing balance and the net book value; below that, "Total" per currency.

Under the total, separate lines hold what never reaches the balance sheet: "Expensed immediately (below the capitalisation threshold)" and "Repairs in the period". If the period ends with a month, the statement is the balances on that date for a balance sheet note; "Download CSV" saves it as a file. The statement covers assets put into service before the end of the period and not disposed of before its start — if it is empty, that is usually why, and not a fault.

Upgrades and repairs#

The "Upgrade / repair…" item in the row menu (or "Add an upgrade or repair" in the card) opens the "Upgrade or repair" window. The "What was done" field separates two cases, and the difference matters:

Then come "Work completion date", "Cost (net of VAT)", "Input VAT", and for an upgrade also "Extend the life by, months" (leave it empty if the life does not change — the remainder is spread over the months left), "What exactly was done", "Contractor" and "Document number". The button is "Record".

The edge cases are handled like this: an upgrade of an already fully depreciated asset without extending its life is expensed in the month it takes effect, and one made before depreciation starts joins the original cost; the card gains a "Cost incl. upgrades" line, and the "Cost" column in the register shows the cost including upgrades up to the current month. Where exactly the border between a repair and an upgrade runs is your accountant's call — the window does not guess: in Poland a tax upgrade starts at PLN 10,000 a year, in Georgia repairs are deductible within 5 % of the group's balance.

Disposal#

The "Dispose…" item opens the "Asset disposal" window: "Disposal date", "Reason" ("Sold", "Written off", "Lost", "Stolen", "Transferred", "Returned to the lessor"), "Sale proceeds (net of VAT)" for a sale and a "Note". The button is "Dispose". After that the asset stays in the register as a grey row, depreciation stops with the month of disposal, and the month journal gains a disposal operation with a loss or a gain.

QR labels and stock-takes#

The "🏷 Labels" button above the register prints 58×40 mm stickers for every filtered asset that has an inventory number; the "Print label" item in the row menu prints a single one. A sticker carries a QR code, the inventory number in large type, the name, the location and the custodian.

The QR code points at that asset's card in your admin panel (/assets/?asset=<id>): walking the premises, a phone opens the card by scanning instead of searching by number. The link only works for someone signed in with access to the section, and the sticker itself carries nothing that is not already visible on the object. Printing goes through the ordinary browser dialog, so it lands the same way on a label thermal printer and on a normal printer in "fit to page" mode; for the printer itself see hardware.

Phones and equipment in one click#

Nothing is substituted in the other direction: the list of phones in Telephony stays derived from registrations on the PBX, while the asset register holds what a human created. Cameras and devices that are still merely "discovered" are not added this way.

Limitations#

• There is no stock-take document yet. QR labels and a walk-around with them exist; an act of "per register / per count" with discrepancies does not.
• The entries are a file to download. The month journal comes as JSON and CSV; the ledger core that would accept it automatically is not connected yet — your accountant imports the file.
• Pool systems are approximated. In the UK, Kazakhstan and Georgia the law computes depreciation annually per pool, while the section computes it per asset per month: in the year of acquisition this understates the charge.
• The Kazakhstan pack is verified only in part (the asset classifier, the transition of balances to the new Tax Code, the annual pool), and countries without their own pack get the general IFRS for SMEs one — the card flags both as a default that needs your accountant's confirmation.
• Month, period and book are not in the address. Only the tab lives in the link (?tab=) — you cannot send a colleague a link straight to "May, tax book".
• Editing from two tabs at once. On cenaly.com and cenaly.com the write is conditional: the losing tab re-reads the register and repeats the change. On cenaly.ru the write is unconditional — edit the register from one place.
• The section files no tax returns. It computes depreciation and hands over entries; declarations, property tax and vehicle tax stay with your accountant.
• Amounts are whole minor units of the currency (cents, tiyin; the yen has none, the dinar has three). Fractions of a cent are not stored, and the monthly amounts add up to the base.

Troubleshooting#

FAQ#

How is "Assets" different from "Inventory"?#

Inventory is about stock that gets consumed: food, goods, packaging. "Assets" is about what you use for years and what loses value gradually: equipment, furniture, vehicles, premises, software. A purchase belongs to one of them, never to both.

Do I need an accountant to use this?#

To keep the register and print labels — no. To sign off the policy and settle the tricky cases (is this an upgrade or a repair, capitalise or expense) — yes: the country button gives a default, not a professional opinion.

What about small items like a kettle or a router?#

Nothing special: if the cost is not above the country's threshold, the country button sets "Expense immediately (low value)" in both books. In the statement such purchases appear on a separate line under the total and never reach the balance sheet.

How do I hand the data to my accountant?#

The Depreciation tab → "Download month journal (JSON)" or "Download CSV": the whole month is there — recognition, upgrades and repairs, depreciation and disposals with the accounts filled in. The statement for a period has its own CSV on the Statement tab.

Are leased assets covered?#

You can record them: "How acquired" has "Lease", and on return the disposal reason is "Returned to the lessor". Whether such an asset belongs on the balance sheet and should be depreciated is decided by your accountant through the card's policies — the section does not interpret lease contracts automatically.

Related articles#

• App store — where the "Assets & equipment" card is switched on
• Hardware: what connects and Cenaly Hardware Bridge — where the "🧰 To assets" button comes from
• Telephony: your own PBX — handsets and the "To assets" button in the handset card
• Labels — the label printer the stickers come out of
• Inventory — stock and consumables, as opposed to fixed assets
• Customers and counterparties — where the supplier suggestions come from
• Employees and shifts — who can be made custodian
• Finance — revenue, costs and profit of a location, and Documents — acts and contracts for purchases and write-offs
• Data export — the whole account in one archive