Essex County Council selects Asset4000 from RAM to manage its £2.4bn asset base

Large authority implements asset management solution to prepare for upcoming IFRS legislation and improve audit trail

Essex County Council, a large local authority, has selected Asset4000 from Real Asset Management (RAM) to control its £2.4bn worth of assets (as per 2008/09 accounts), in an order worth in excess of £50,000. The solution provides the Council with an IFRS-ready centralised asset register with the required component accounting detail, as well as improving back of house processes and strengthening the audit trail.

The County Council provides Local Education Authority services for Essex, as well as highway maintenance and social care for the area which covers 12 District Councils. Essex County Council's fixed assets total more than 900 properties, 561 items of vehicle plant and equipment, 1265 hectares of land and 7399 km of road.

Key drivers for selecting RAM's Asset4000 to manage these assets included functionality and compliance with accounting legislation as well as full integration with the existing e5 accounting software package from COA Solutions. Anna Sallis, Finance Manager at the Council, comments, "Prior to purchasing the RAM software we used spreadsheets to manage our capital assets. This proved a lengthy process using complex formulae which made it very difficult to maintain and ensure consistency for audits. With the changes introduced through the 2007 Statement of Recommended Practice (SoRP) and revaluation accounting, this system became too difficult to manage."

Sallis adds, "When considering multiple vendors we found that many software solutions which claimed SoRP compliance simply did not contain that level of functionality. Another local authority had actually closed its annual accounts with the RAM software: It was this proven track record and the user friendly nature of the system which proved the deciding factors."

The Asset4000 system is designed to assist with SoRP and IFRS compliance for local government bodies, with features including generation of revaluation reserve entries, calculation of historic and revaluation depreciation, maintenance of audit trail records on historic impairment and component valuations and accounting. Describing the functionality of Asset4000, Sallis continues, "The system allows safe, multi-user access and import/export capabilities, as well as creating a clear audit trail. Future audits will be a lot simpler as all relevant transactions from the general ledger will be associated within the RAM asset register. This means that instead of trying to trace an asset through several capital codes, it is all centralised and the auditor can drill down into the information and see all of the transactions which have enabled the capital enhancement."

Sallis adds, "Importantly, the RAM solution will also improve our internal processes. Instead of the big rush to gather information at year end, we will be putting more regular updates in place, generating significant time savings across the team which we're sure will equate to overall cost savings."

Sallis concludes, "The decision to implement the RAM solution is about being prepared for the long-term. In addition to ensured IFRS compliance, the new CIPFA categorisation for infrastructure assets such as roads means that we will have to provide a more detailed breakdown of the asset information - and we'll be using RAM to complete this. We are also considering future system developments such as allowing other finance teams to access the asset register so that they can view the live data, improving communication and transparency."

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