Hire company’s lenders require asset audit and verification

Work

The Company owned a hire fleet of over hundreds of items of broadcast, film and sound equipment as well as 9 OB trucks.

There were a number of challenges in effectively performing this work as a result of:

1. Given that the company is a successful hire company a large proportion of the hire assets are on-hire and cannot be physically verified.
2. A broadcast or cinematography camera is made of many components ranging in cost from over £50k to less than £500 that are hired as a single item but may belong to different funders.
3. Typically a rental company will have a bar coded tag attached to each asset to assist with identification but to the size some items some items are often considered as too awkward to tag.
4. An equipment hire company should have a comprehensive asset management system to identify each assets’ specification, bar-code number, location and lessor.

Outcome

In performing our work we interrogated the asset management system, inspected equipment coming on or off hire and verified a sample of the hire equipment in the warehouses.

Ultimately, the Company had an excellent work force who had the benefit of a comprehensive and robust asset management system resulting in an accurate audit. This work and a detailed valuation enabled the lender to increase and enhance the available credit lines.