Tracking Your Assets

As your wealth increases,one thing that’s bound to increase is the number of your material possessions.And keeping track of them and managing your assets and toys is a major issue. Small wonder then that the seriously wealthy have family offices,run like small companies, to manage their personal wealth.There are trusts with administrators to manage endowments.There are professionals and companies to manage car,yacht,art collections etc.Moreover if your money comes from businesses you are bound to sooner or later require systems and software and perhaps dedicated staff to manage your fixed assets and inventory.

Even for those of us who are not yet billionaires,maintaining an inventory of our household assets and valuable artifacts and collections,in a safe place, is a good idea.The effort of cataloging everything we own is time consuming and something of a pain in the neck but essential to purchase adequate home owner’s insurance.Also in case of claims,having detailed lists of your possessions,their depreciated value  and proof of actually possessing them at the time of claim,betters your chance of getting the insurer to payout a decent sum.Items like jewellery,art and antiques etc. need to be covered for full value via specialized policies or riders so that in case of theft or natural disasters or man-made disasters you can recover their full value.Also up to date inventory lists come in handy while estate planning and drafting your will.

Just as there is a need to catalog and manage assets in the home,there is a similar need to track and manage assets in your business so that you can purchase adequate insurance and have the necessary proof to make claims when necessary.Moreover,depreciation is a very important word in business.By having a very up to date asset inventory list you can take full advantage of the depreciation provisions offered by the relevant tax codes.

A good way to keep track of assets and maintain up to date records of their condition and value,whether at home or in the work place, is by using Asset Panda.Asset Panda is an asset management app and software.You can get to know more about it at the company website AssetPanda.com. This app,downloaded onto a smartphone,helps you quickly and systematically draw up detailed lists of assets.Also you can store the details that insurance companies and the taxmen need with respect to your assets.You can store pictures and videos of your assets and their purchase details,scan in bar codes etc. and store them with the utmost safety on secured servers in the cloud.A free version of the app is available,on the company website and on other sites like c-net and Apple’s App Store, to get you started.And many of us might need nothing more than the free version for our asset management needs.Even the paid versions are pretty reasonably priced  for the value they provide.This app reduces the time required to survey assets and draw up lists.Also it has a feature which allows you to note sales,loans of assets etc.So the list automatically updates itself.So there is no question of having to periodically resurvey and manually update asset lists.