Equipment Inventory

The Equipment Inventory office is responsible for tagging and control reporting of all university movable equipment, purchased for Ohio University. This includes the five regional campuses and various regional teaching sites across Ohio. Equipment must meet the following criteria:

• Must be movable and not permanently affixed;
• Have a cost of $5,000 or greater when purchased or be a gift with an appraised value of $5,000 or more;
• Have a useful life of one year or more and be non-expendable.

Equipment owned by Ohio University shall be tagged with a green tag. Equipment owned by a sponsor where title remains with the sponsor shall be tagged with a red tag. Both green and red tag equipment are recorded in the Fixed Asset system. The responsibility for equipment accountability is assigned to the Principal Investigator (PI) or department. Finance is responsible for equipment reporting. The PI or department shall notify Finance of any disposition plans. The office responsible for sponsor equipment reporting is Grants Accounting and may be contacted at finance.grants@ohio.edu.

Please see the Equipment Inventory Quick Reference Guide for information on pulling a listing of inventory.

Purchasing Object Code

When purchasing equipment that will be tagged, a specfic range of object codes must be used. These object codes are used exclusively for tagged equipment. Please be sure to use them when making any purchase that meets the above criteria.

Sponsor owned equipment must use the following Object Code:

If you have any questions about object codes please reach out to finance.equipmentinventory@ohio.edu.

Disposal of Equipment

At no time can a University department or office discard or sale a University asset without proper authorization; nor can a University asset be given or donated to any individual, Private Corporation, or Non-Profit Organization. Please work with University Moving and Surplus for equipment disposal or sale. If you have any questions please reference the Equipment Inventory FAQs page. If you need more information please contact us at finance.equipmentinventory@ohio.edu.

Policies and Regulations

All equipment must adhere to University Policy 19.054: Equipment Inventory Control. More information regarding receiving and handling of equipment is available for both Green Tag Equipment and Red Tag Equipment.

Fully depreciated assets should remain on the books of the University and continue to be inventoried.

"It would be incorrect accounting treatment to remove a fixed asset cost and related accumulated depreciation from the accounting records as long as the underlying asset is still being used, for two reasons:

• Metrics. The presence of such a large amount of accumulated depreciation for an asset should be stated, so that someone analyzing the financial statements can discern that the company tends to retain its fixed assets for a long period of time; this can be an indicator of multiple issues, such as good maintenance or the imminent need to spend cash for replacement assets.
• Asset recordation. If an asset is on the premises and in use, then it should be recorded. Its deletion would remove the asset from the fixed asset register, so that someone might conduct a fixed asset audit and observe the asset, but not see it in the company's records.

When a fixed asset is eventually disposed of, the event should be recorded by debiting the accumulated depreciation account for the full amount depreciated, crediting the fixed asset account for its full recorded cost, and using a gain or loss account to record any remaining difference."

https://www.accountingtools.com/articles/what-is-the-accounting-for-a-fully-depreciated-asset.html