Southwark Council, London’s largest social landlord, is just about to start the implementation of Asset4000 to support component accounting for its £3.4 billion assets.
Dennis Callaghan, chief accountant, Southwark Council, said, “The complexity of having to adopt IFRS accounting processes means that we need a tool to let us manage our assets at a more detailed level than before and with greater flexibility.
“IFRS allows us to adopt component accounting incrementally, but at the very least we have to identify land and buildings separately. So, if we have 40,000 assets on the register at present, we would then have 80,000. Furthermore, we may have to identify roofs, lifts and other components within the property. We suddenly go from having 40,000 records to a much larger database.”
Referring to the council’s selection of RAM’s Asset4000 system, Callaghan said, “The system will give us higher quality reports on the value of our fixed assets which will help to identify easily the level of componentisation, as well as increasing transparency in the calculation of our depreciation charges.”
