The SECP / ICAP fixed assets schedule, column by column
The statutory note most small companies rebuild by hand every year — what each column is for, and the two rules that make it tie to the accounts.
4 min read
The fixed assets schedule is the note to the accounts that explains the property, plant and equipment line on the balance sheet. In the format prescribed for companies reporting under the SECP framework and the accounting standards ICAP adopts, it is a two-halved table: cost rolled forward across the year, and accumulated depreciation rolled forward beside it, with written down value falling out of the difference.
It is also, in most small companies, rebuilt by hand in a spreadsheet every year — which is why it so often fails to tie to the ledger it is supposed to be a note to.
The columns
| Column | What belongs in it |
|---|---|
| Cost — opening | The cost of assets held at the start of the period |
| Cost — additions | Assets acquired during the period, at cost |
| Cost — disposals | The original cost of assets disposed of, not their book value |
| Cost — adjustments | Whatever the three columns above did not explain |
| Cost — closing | The cost of assets held at the end of the period |
| Depreciation — opening | Accumulated depreciation brought forward |
| Depreciation — charge | This period’s charge, on assets held during it |
| Depreciation — on disposals | Accumulated depreciation removed with the asset |
| Depreciation — adjustments | The residual, again |
| Depreciation — closing | Accumulated depreciation carried forward |
| Written down value | Closing cost less closing accumulated depreciation |
| Rate | The depreciation rate applied to the class |
Rule one: a class is an account, not a category
The single most common reason a schedule does not tie is that its rows are grouped by a free-text category somebody typed on the asset record — "Vehicles", "vehicle", "Motor vehicles" — rather than by the general ledger account the cost was actually posted to.
Group by the account and two things become true by construction: each class total equals that account’s ledger balance, and the grand total equals the property, plant and equipment section of the balance sheet. Group by a typed category and the schedule ties to nothing, which is the one thing a statutory note may not do.
Rule two: both adjustment columns are residuals
It is tempting to treat the adjustment columns as a place to put revaluations and nothing else, and to compute the closing figures by adding up the movement columns. Do it the other way round.
Compute the closing figures independently — the cost of what is held at the period end, and the depreciation accumulated against it to that date — and let the adjustment column absorb the difference. Then each half of every row adds up whether or not you anticipated every kind of movement, and a figure appearing in an adjustment column is telling you something rather than hiding it.
In practice this catches real errors. A depreciation run posted before a back-dated disposal will charge depreciation to an asset that had already left; four independent sums sitting beside each other would simply not add up, with no indication why. A residual puts the discrepancy in a named column where somebody will ask about it.
The rate, when a class holds several lives
A class rarely holds assets on a single useful life, so there is no one rate to print. The honest figure is cost-weighted: the total annual charge for the class divided by the total cost of the assets held at the period end. That is the rate which reproduces the class’s own annual charge, and it collapses to exactly the individual rate when every asset in the class shares one.
Where the class holds nothing, leave it blank rather than printing 0%. Zero reads as "held but not depreciated"; blank reads as "nothing here", which is the truth.
A formatting point that costs real money
Name the currency once at the head of the note and then print bare figures. Eleven columns each carrying a currency prefix will not fit landscape A4, and most PDF table renderers respond to that by wrapping inside the cell — so the printed schedule reads "PKR 60,000." on one line and "00" on the next. It is the kind of defect nobody finds by reading the code and everybody finds by printing the page.
How Bizsoftbiz generates it
Bizsoftbiz builds the schedule from the asset register and the ledger together, one row per property, plant and equipment account, with both adjustment columns as residuals and a cost-weighted rate. It exports to Excel and PDF in the prescribed column order, with the banner headings merged across the cost and depreciation halves the way the reference form has them.