Procedures to Tag and Track Movable Assets

A county must establish written procedures to tag and track all movable capital assets over the established capitalization threshold. The inventory tag should be  numbered so that the asset can be traced back to the county asset records.

Example:
A county has recorded a front-end loader into its computerized capital asset database and assigned the vehicle the asset ID number 110. The county asset manager is doing an annual physical inventory of movable assets and is able to locate and identify the exact front-end loader at the county road department garage by the asset number tag affixed to the vehicle and by the information on the  computerized capital asset database.

County management should insure that, at a minimum, a county-wide inventory of capitalized assets is performed annually and all purchased, donated, surplused, and/or transferred movable assets are accounted for and properly recorded in capital  asset records. There are numerous bar-code inventory tag systems on the market  today, some with UPC format to permit scanning by an electronic optical scanner. While these systems have proven helpful in several Tennessee counties with asset  tracking, they are not required.