Fixed Asset Register Format in Excel: Template Fields (and Where It Breaks)

Almost every company starts its fixed asset register in Excel, and for a while it works. A compliant register needs a consistent set of fields — get those right and you can produce a basic Schedule II depreciation schedule. The trouble starts as the register grows.

The fields a compliant FAR needs

• Identity: asset code/tag, description, asset class, and parent asset (for components).
• Acquisition: purchase date, put-to-use date, vendor, invoice, gross cost, and GST.
• Location & responsibility: location, department, cost centre, custodian.
• Depreciation: method (SLM/WDV), useful life, residual value, accumulated depreciation, and net block.
• Status: in use, disposed, sold, written off, held-for-sale — with dates.

The five points where the spreadsheet breaks

• Pro-rata on mid-year additions and disposals stops tying out across hundreds of rows.
• You need income-tax (block WDV) depreciation too — a second workbook that immediately drifts from the first.
• Multiple entities each need their own fiscal year, policy and freeze — one file per entity, manually consolidated.
• There is no audit trail: who changed a cost, and when, is unknowable.
• There are no controls: anyone can back-date a disposal or overwrite accumulated depreciation.

AssetOS keeps the familiar register fields but adds days-based depreciation for book and tax in parallel, per-entity fiscal years and freezes, a full audit trail, and maker–checker controls — so the register stays reconciled as you grow.