Keeping track of school assets
Across the organisation, Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) owns over £135m of equipment, furniture, vehicles etc, to enable us deliver our services. These items need to be properly recorded for operational and insurance purposes, in accordance with Financial Regulations.
What’s not always remembered is that records of these assets also form a key part of our financial accounts- we have to demonstrate that the value of items on our balance sheet is accurate. Failure to do so can result in our accounts being qualified by our auditors.
Auditors test our accounts by picking a number of sample items and asking us to prove we still use them. Because audit apply the findings of this sample testing to the total value of assets, even one or two missing items can be extrapolated to indicate a major error. In recent years the satisfactory sign off of our accounts has depended on us searching far and wide to find items including projectors, cabling and even a canoe!
While a great deal of work has been done to improve these records, there may still be some inaccuracies. In particular, we need to check that we still hold all the furniture, equipment and vehicle assets we list.
To ensure that records remain accurate, a is available on SOLERO, to notify Herts Finance when assets are disposed of (i.e. sold, removed, lost or stolen).
School Online Electronic Returns and Outputs (SOLERO): Login
Please ensure that you complete and return this form whenever your service or establishment is disposing of equipment, furniture and fittings, vehicles, IT hardware and software etc. that are known or likely to have been purchased from Capital. This may be when you are:
- closing/opening establishments
- moving offices
- replacing items that are broken or not fit for purpose
- making changes in service delivery that need different equipment etc
- changing IT systems
If you have any queries, please contact: