Mobile phones have made our lives much easier, for personal and professional use alike.
A large share of the world’s population uses a mobile phone. The phone has become such an essential part of our daily routine that we can hardly imagine life without it.
This handy device does more than our routine tasks (alarm, calendar, social apps and so on). It is now becoming indispensable for handling business affairs too.
Asset Management through a Mobile Application
Asset management is a systematic way to operate, maintain, upgrade and dispose of assets in the most cost-effective manner, while monitoring cost, risk and performance.
This can now be done from a mobile phone. Asset management software with a mobile app gives you access to all your business assets around the clock.
If you need to find the location of an asset, you do not need to go to a desktop. You can simply open the app on your phone and get the information you need.
Here are the important areas where a mobile application is especially useful:
- Push Notifications
- Increase in Productivity
- Integrations with Existing Software
- Ease and Convenience of Use
- Real-time Access to Business Assets
- Scanning Capabilities
- Secured App Data
- Data Accuracy
- Effective Asset Tracking and Management
- Access on Phones and the Web
Beyond these, there are several other features to help track and manage business assets, such as adding or discarding assets, the movement history of assets, and audits and physical verification.
What are Audits?
An audit is an independent examination of the financial information of an entity or asset, whether it is run for profit or not and whatever its size or form.
The process helps make sure an enterprise’s books of accounts are properly maintained as required by law. Through audits, stakeholders can also evaluate and improve risk management, control and governance processes over the subjects under examination.
Audits are essential to help a business achieve its objectives and report on its operations, prevent fraudulent use or misappropriation of its assets and keep the cost of assets to a minimum.
Importance of Audits
1. Business Objectives
An effective audit system helps the organization pursue and reach its strategic objectives. The enterprise needs internal control over processes and operations to detect and prevent irregularities, maintain mandatory business records, monitor ongoing performance and support profitability.
2. Risk of Mis-Statement
To allocate organizational resources well and understand the profitability of each segment and product line, a business needs internal controls such as asset audit software.
Such a system also provides all relevant information about the status of an organization’s assets and liabilities.
3. Detection and Prevention of Frauds
Internal audits play an important role in preventing fraud. Regular analysis of operations and well-maintained systems go a long way toward preventing fraud and accounting irregularities.
4. Cost of Capital
The cost of capital is a very important factor for an organization of any size. It reflects the risk associated with an investment, where a higher return can come with higher risk.
An effective audit system helps reduce risks such as information risk, fraud, theft and poor management caused by insufficient information.
Why does a Business need Mobile Audits?
Mobile audits are changing the way audits and inspections are done in many industries. Organizations want to automate audits to increase efficiency and reduce risk.
Mobile phones are very easy to use, and they let you carry out audits and inspections from anywhere, at any time.
A mobile phone camera can scan asset tags. That means audits can be done on any smartphone.
You can create and assign audits by asset category and location. The mobile app helps you count assets and detect theft or damage.
With mobile audits, the enterprise receives all data as soon as it is captured. This helps keep data complete and accurate.
Benefits of Mobile Audits
1. Better Data Collection
Mobile phones give auditors useful tools and collect better, more accurate data, such as location and signatures. With these features, audits are easier to conduct, and potential errors can be prevented and corrected.
The phone can record where an asset was found, and auditors can add photos and notes along with each result, which reduces paperwork.
2. Check on Data Integrity
Data integrity is the most valuable benefit of mobile audits. Data is updated instantly, so the correct information is available right away.
Offline data capture also improves data integrity, because information is recorded at the asset’s location even without a signal. On the other hand, data can still be wrong if the auditor enters incorrect information.
3. Increased Productivity
Digital tools make daily work easier. Processing piles of paperwork and hard copies by hand is frustrating for auditors, time-consuming and inefficient.
Mobile audits increase your team’s productivity and give you accurate information as it is captured.
Mobile Audits Put the Asset Register in the Auditor’s Hand
Adopting mobile technology opens up more opportunities for a business to grow. A mobile phone lets you view, access and edit information.
A mobile asset audit provides accurate, up-to-date information. This helps you identify problems and find the right solutions.
Asset Infinity supports mobile audits through verification rounds done by scanning with the mobile app.
As businesses rely more on technology, mobile audits are becoming the accepted way to reach audit goals.