▶ Why are my Assets not appearing in Box 9 on the Annual Return?

The total of your council's fixed assets and long term investments should appear in Box 9 on the Annual Return (Section 2 - Accounting Statements). If you run the Annual Return on Scribe and Box 9 is blank or the figure is incorrect the following checks should be made:

Do you have data appearing in your Asset Register?

• Go to Year End → Asset Register
• If there are no records listed then you will need to add some:

New Users of Scribe

If the current year is your first year in Scribe then asset records will need to be added. There are three options of how to do this:

1. Import your Asset Register
   • Fill in the asset register import spreadsheet so that we can import your asset details for you.  Please contact us at [email protected] to request a copy of the import sheet.
2. Enter in your Asset Register details directly into Scribe
   • Go to Year End → Asset Register. Click + to add a record and enter in the details. Repeat until all assets are added. 
3. Enter one Asset Register record to record the total asset figure against
   • This option can be used if you have an asset register maintained externally to Scribe that cannot yet been added to Scribe.  Go to Year End → Asset Register and click + to add one asset record. The description can be entered as 'total council assets' or similar and the total amount to be shown in Box 9 entered in the Purchase Value field. 

Existing Users of Scribe with Asset data in the prior year

If asset records exist in the prior year but the current year is blank then the records have not been copied over. To resolve this:

• Go to Setup → Bring Forward Balances
• Tick Assets and then click Copy 
• Return to Year End → Asset Register when the records copied from the prior year should now show.  Updates will need to be made for any disposals or new assets.

Data appears in the Asset Register but the value in Box 9 is incorrect

Incomplete records

If the value in Box 9 is not as you expect then it may be that the asset register has not been updated for additions or disposals or not all records have been entered.  Go to Year End → Asset Register to add further records or mark assets as disposed.

The total value is not showing correctly

The default on Scribe is for the Box 9 figure to be the total purchase value of all assets (except those marked as disposed). If you would rather report the total current value then this must be updated:

• Go to Account → Council Profile
• Scroll to Asset Valuation Method and select the required option (Purchase value or Current value).
• Save to update. 

💡 When any changes have been made to the Asset Register check that the Box 9 figure on the Annual Return reflects them. If you're working in Income & Expenditure, you must first run 'Calculate'.