Asset Register & Condition Survey

What this tool does

CM8-94 is a fixed-asset and condition register for whoever has to keep a building, a site or an estate working. You list what you are responsible for, what it cost, how long it should last and what state it is in; the tool works out how old each asset is, what it is still worth on a straight-line basis, how much life it has left, what it would cost to replace, how much you would have to set aside each year to fund that replacement, and which inspections have fallen overdue.

It runs entirely inside this one file. There is no account and no network request of any kind, so your asset list, your costs and your condition grades never leave the computer you are using.

What belongs on the register

The useful test is simple: if it failed, would you have to find money to repair or replace it? If the answer is yes, it belongs here. That normally means:

• Building fabric — roof coverings, windows, external walls, floor finishes. These are the largest single items on most registers and the easiest to forget, because nobody services them.
• Engineering services — boilers, chillers, air handling, ventilation, switchgear, generators, lifts, fire detection, pumps, water storage.
• Plant, vehicles and equipment — anything with a serial number and a service history.
• External works — car park surfacing, lighting columns, fencing, drainage, barriers.

Consumables and anything you would simply re-buy out of the running budget do not belong here. Group low-value items such as furniture into one line, or leave them out and say so. Decide the level you will work at and stay at it: a register listing "Building A" as one asset and "AHU-1 fan belt" as another cannot be totalled sensibly. One line per replaceable item is the usual level.

Filling in an asset

Reference, description, location, category, acquisition date, purchase cost, expected life, condition and status are all required, because every figure the tool produces depends on them. Two of them are worth particular care:

• Acquisition date is when the asset went into service, not when the invoice was paid and not when the building was built. It drives age, book value and remaining life.
• Expected life is how long the asset should last from new, not how long you think is left. Typical figures run from around 8 years for light vehicles and small equipment, 15 to 20 for boilers and air handling plant, 20 to 25 for flat roof coverings and lighting installations, and 25 to 30 for lifts and main electrical distribution. Use your own experience of your own conditions: plant in a coastal or dusty environment does not last as long as the same plant in a clean one.

Grading condition

Condition is a judgement made by someone who has looked at the asset. The five-point scale here is the one most condition surveys use in some form:

• Grade — Meaning — What it implies
• 1 Excellent — As new — Nothing needed
• 2 Good — Sound and performing — Routine maintenance only
• 3 Fair — Serviceable — Minor repairs falling due
• 4 Poor — Operating, but not for long — Major repair or early renewal
• 5 Failed — Not serviceable — Replace now

Grade the asset as it is, not as the age suggests it should be. A well-maintained boiler at eighteen years can be grade 3; a neglected one at eight can be grade 4. That divergence is the point of surveying condition at all — if grade always followed age, you would not need to look.

Age and book value

Age is measured in years from the acquisition date to today, using 365.25 days to absorb leap years:

Book value is straight-line depreciation, the simplest and most transparent method there is. If you set a residual value in the settings, the asset is written down only to that figure rather than to nothing:

The max matters. Without it, an asset that has outlived its expected life produces a negative book value, and a register full of them quietly understates the total. Here the value floors at the residual and stays there — an eight-year van with an eight-year life is worth zero on this basis, not minus something. Disposed assets are shown at zero.

Book value falls by the day rather than in annual steps, so the total moves smoothly instead of jumping on each anniversary. It will therefore not match an accounting system that charges depreciation monthly.

Remaining useful life

This is an arithmetic expectation, not a prediction. It says what is left of the life you assumed, and nothing about the condition you actually found. Read it next to the condition grade: an asset with six years of nominal life left and a grade of 5 needs replacing this year, and an asset past its life at grade 2 can usually be left alone. Where the two disagree, the condition grade wins — revise the expected life so the register stops lying to you.

Replacement cost and the annual provision

Replacement cost is what it would cost to put an equivalent asset in today: the item, its installation, removing the old one and making good. It is not the purchase cost, and on anything more than a few years old it is usually a good deal higher. It is optional, but every asset without a figure quietly understates your totals, so the replacement tile counts how many are missing.

The annual provision is what you would have to set aside each year to have the replacement money when it is needed. Two bases are available in the settings:

The remaining-life basis answers "starting now, what do I need each year?" and so charges you for every year you did not save. On an ageing estate it produces alarming numbers, and that alarm is the honest signal: the money should already have been put by. The max(1, …) stops a division by zero and means an asset at or past its expected life shows the full replacement cost as needed within a year.

The whole-life basis is the smooth figure you would have budgeted from the day the asset was installed. It is the right number for planning new assets and the wrong number for catching up on old ones.

Neither basis includes inflation, financing, or the fact that replacements rarely happen one at a time. Both are a planning aid to size the problem, not a funding model.

Inspections and the overdue flag

Each asset carries the date of the last inspection or survey and the date the next one falls due. The register shows the gap in days, and the warning window in the settings decides how far ahead an inspection counts as coming up rather than merely scheduled.

Assets with no next inspection date are counted separately and listed at the end of the inspections table. They are not "fine" — they are unscheduled, which on statutory items is worse than overdue, because nothing will ever prompt you.

This tool does not know what you are required to inspect. Pressure systems, lifting equipment, lifts, electrical installations, fire and water systems are all subject to inspection regimes that differ by country, by industry and by use. Establish what applies to you, set the dates accordingly, and keep the certificates separately.

Status, and disposed assets

Status separates what you still hold from what has gone. Assets marked disposed are excluded from every money total: purchase cost, book value, replacement cost, the provision, the condition chart and the location summary. Their book value shows as zero, and the tool will not let you record a replacement cost against one — a disposed asset does not need replacing, and if something took its place, that something is a new row.

Keep disposed rows for as long as you need to trace the disposal, then delete them. Standby, out of service and awaiting disposal assets are still held, still owned and still counted, because you would still have to fund their replacement.

Reading the charts and tables

The condition donut shows how many assets sit at each grade and the replacement cost behind each one. The location chart ranks buildings by replacement cost, so you can see which one is carrying the liability. The category chart pairs the number of assets with the book value remaining in them.

The funding chart is the one to take to a budget meeting. Each bar is the replacement cost of a category, split into the part the book value still covers and the part you have yet to find. Book value is capped at the replacement cost so the bar always totals the replacement cost — and book value is an accounting figure, not money in an account. A bar that is almost entirely "still to fund" is an asset group that has been consumed and not yet paid for.

The summary by location totals every money column for each building, and obeys the filters, so filtering to one category or one grade re-cuts the whole table.

What this is not

It is not an accounting system. The book value here is a management estimate on one method; a set of accounts may use different lives, componentised assets, revaluation or impairment, and will not agree with it. Do not post from it.

It is not a valuation. It says nothing about what an asset would fetch or what it would cost to insure. Insurance reinstatement value in particular is a different figure arrived at a different way — do not use the replacement cost column for it.

It is not a maintenance planner. It records the condition and the dates; it does not schedule the work, order the parts or prove that anything was done.

Printing and sharing

Print Report produces a report from whatever the current filter shows: the headline figures, all four charts, the location summary, the inspection list, the full register and your closing notes. Print to PDF to circulate it. The scope line under the title states the filter in force and the currency, so clear the filters before issuing anything described as the whole estate — and say in the closing notes when the survey behind the grades was carried out, because a reader cannot tell from the numbers.

Saving your work

Assets, settings and the report header are written to this browser's local storage as you type, and the toolbar shows the time of the last save. That storage belongs to one browser on one computer: another browser, a private window, a second machine or a clean-up tool that clears site data will not have it.

Treat Export .json as the real save — one file containing everything, which Import .json restores anywhere. Export CSV gives you the register for spreadsheet work, including every derived column and every filtered record, not only those drawn on screen. Reset asks twice, then erases everything this tool has stored. There is no undo.

Accuracy & disclaimer

This tool calculates from what you enter and cannot check any of it. It cannot tell whether an expected life is realistic, whether a condition grade reflects the asset as it stands today, whether a replacement cost is current, or whether an inspection that is marked as done was actually carried out. Every headline figure inherits those uncertainties.

It is a management register and a calculation aid — not accounting advice, not a valuation, not a compliance record and not a substitute for a competent condition survey by someone who has been on site.