What Is a Fixed Asset Register?

A fixed asset register is the detailed record of every long-lived asset a company owns: what it is, what it cost, when it was acquired, how it is being depreciated, what it is worth now, and where it is. The general ledger holds one number — 18,000 € of machinery. The register holds the forty machines behind it.

That relationship is the same subledger and control account structure as receivables and payables, and it exists for the same reason: a single balance cannot answer any of the questions people actually ask about it.

What it records

Per asset, at minimum:

Field	Why it matters
Unique code and description	Identification, and matching to the physical item
Asset group / class	Determines accounts and depreciation policy
Acquisition date and cost	The starting point for everything
Depreciation start date	Often later than acquisition — when it was ready for use
Useful life and method	The depreciation calculation
Salvage value	The part of cost that is not depreciated
Accumulated depreciation	Charged to date
Net book value	Cost less accumulated depreciation
Ledger accounts	Asset, accumulated depreciation, expense
Status	Active, fully depreciated, disposed
Location and custodian	For the physical verification nobody enjoys
Supplier and invoice reference	The audit trail back to the purchase

Later events belong here too: improvements that extend life, revaluations, impairments, transfers between locations, and disposal with its date and proceeds.

Why it exists

Depreciation has to be computed per asset. Two machines bought in different months with different lives cannot be depreciated from a combined balance. The register is the calculation.

Financial statements need the disclosures. The EU Accounting Directive requires movement schedules for fixed assets — opening cost, additions, disposals, closing cost, and the same for accumulated depreciation. Those come from the register, not the ledger.

Tax rules differ from accounting rules. Statutory rates and lives rarely match your accounting policy, so the register often carries both bases.

Assets get lost. Not metaphorically — laptops, tools and equipment physically disappear, and a register with locations and custodians is the only way to discover it. Periodic physical verification against the register is a standard control, and it is usually the first time anyone notices that the "asset" being depreciated was scrapped two years ago.

Disposals must be accounted for. Removing an asset requires both its cost and its accumulated depreciation, and the gain or loss against proceeds. Without a register you cannot compute any of it.

The reconciliation that matters

The register must agree with the ledger, in both directions:

Σ register cost           = balance of the asset accounts (12xx)
Σ register accumulated    = balance of the accumulated depreciation accounts (1229, 1239 …)
Σ register net book value = carrying amount in the balance sheet

Do this every period. Divergence means something was posted to a fixed-asset account without going through the register — a journal entry straight to 1220, an asset purchase expensed by mistake, or a disposal recorded on one side only. All three are common; all three are cheap to fix immediately and expensive to reconstruct a year later.

The capitalization threshold

Not everything long-lived belongs in the register. A 15 € stapler lasts a decade and is not a fixed asset — tracking it would cost more than replacing it every year.

Companies set a capitalization threshold: below it, purchases go straight to expense. Two things to know. In Lithuania the threshold interacts with corporate income tax rules, which set minimum values by asset category — the accounting policy and the tax rule need to be reconciled deliberately, not assumed to match. And thresholds apply per item, not per invoice: buying fifty 200 € chairs is fifty purchases below the threshold, not one 10,000 € asset, unless they genuinely function as a single unit.

Setting the threshold too low creates a register full of noise that nobody will ever verify. Too high and real assets vanish from the balance sheet.

How Nordlet implements it

The register is the assets module, structured in two levels.

Asset groups hold the policy: the asset account, the accumulated-depreciation account, the expense account (6206 by default) and a default useful life. Set up "Machinery" or "IT equipment" once, and every asset in the group inherits the accounting treatment — which is what keeps a register consistent as it grows.

Assets are created with POST /v1/assets/assets/create, carrying code, name, acquisition date, depreciation start date, acquisition cost, salvage value and useful life in months. /assets/list and /assets/get return each asset with its total cost, accumulated depreciation, net book value, months depreciated and status — the register view — and /assets/modernize records an improvement, adding both cost and useful life so subsequent depreciation absorbs the change automatically.

Depreciation runs monthly as a preview-then-post pair, and because a period can only be posted once per asset (enforced by a database constraint, not just application logic), the register and the ledger cannot drift through a double run. Assets move to fully_depreciated on their own and to disposed when they leave.

Honest scope, worth knowing before you rely on it: depreciation is straight-line only; there is no separate tax-depreciation basis, so a divergent tax life is tracked outside the module; revaluation and impairment are not implemented; and physical attributes — location, custodian, serial number — are not modelled beyond the free-text notes field, so a register used for physical verification needs that data kept alongside.

FAQ

What is a fixed asset register?

A detailed record of every long-lived asset a company owns — cost, acquisition date, depreciation method and life, accumulated depreciation, net book value and status. It is the subledger behind the fixed-asset balances in the general ledger.

Is a fixed asset register legally required?

Directly or indirectly, yes for most companies. Financial reporting frameworks require fixed-asset movement disclosures and tax rules require per-asset depreciation records, and neither is possible without a register — even where no statute names the document itself.

What is the difference between the register and the general ledger?

The ledger holds summary balances for each fixed-asset account; the register holds the individual assets making up those balances. They must reconcile, and a difference between them is a control failure to investigate.

What is a capitalization threshold?

The minimum value at which a purchase is recorded as a fixed asset instead of an expense. It keeps trivial items out of the register, and in some countries — Lithuania included — it interacts with tax rules that set minimum values by asset category.

How often should a fixed asset register be verified?

Reconcile to the ledger every period, and verify physically at least annually. The physical check is the one that finds assets that were scrapped, stolen or moved without anyone recording it — and which are otherwise still being depreciated.