Ghost assets aren’t caused by bad teams. They’re caused by a verification model that checks once a year and calls it done.
Source: CFOtech / TechDay Network coverage of SoloTruth ARM launch, April 2026
Kroll Advisory runs more than 8,000 fixed asset engagements a year. Their data is consistent: 10 to 30 percent of the average organization’s asset records are inaccurate. Up to 30 percent of items on a fixed asset register are ghost assets. Nearly 65 percent of records contain errors.
Those numbers show up in audit after audit, across industries, across company sizes. The problem is not getting better.
The question worth asking is why.
The common assumption is that ghost assets result from poor data hygiene, undertrained staff, or inadequate systems. Fix the process, the thinking goes, and the records will clean up.
That assumption is wrong. The problem is structural.
An ERP records a financial transaction at the point of purchase. It logs the asset, assigns a value, and begins depreciating it according to a schedule. From that point forward, the system assumes the asset exists, is in the recorded location, and is in the condition the book value implies.
The ERP has no mechanism to verify any of that. It was not designed to. ERP systems are systems of financial record. They are not systems of physical verification.
So the gap opens. Not suddenly. Incrementally.
An asset moves to another facility without a transfer entry. A piece of equipment gets cannibalized for parts during a repair. A machine is retired when a newer model arrives, but the disposal never makes it into the system. Each event is individually routine. Collectively, they widen the distance between what the register says and what you would actually find if you walked the floor today.
Most organizations respond to this problem with an annual physical inventory or fixed asset audit. An internal team, or an external firm, samples the register and reconciles what they find against what’s recorded.
This approach has three problems.
First, it’s a sample. No organization audits 100 percent of its fixed assets annually. The standard is a statistically significant subset. Ghost assets in the unsampled portion remain on the books.
Second, it’s retrospective. By the time the audit happens, the inaccurate data has already influenced depreciation calculations, insurance coverage, capital planning, and financial reporting for the prior period. The audit finds the error. It does not undo the downstream effects.
Third, it resets to zero. The day after the audit closes, assets start moving again. The cycle restarts. By the time next year’s audit arrives, the gap has widened again.
The annual audit is not a solution to register drift. It is a periodic glimpse at how bad the drift has become.
The financial consequences distribute across line items in ways that make them easy to overlook individually.
Depreciation continues on assets that no longer exist, overstating both asset values and expenses. Insurance premiums are paid on assets that were scrapped years ago. Capital budgets request replacement equipment that, in some cases, still exists on another floor of the same facility. Tax liabilities are miscalculated in both directions.
Across a $100 million asset base with a 15 percent register discrepancy, the combined annual cost of those effects falls between $1.45 million and $4.05 million. That range is based on rates Kroll Advisory and Protiviti document routinely. It is not a worst-case scenario.
For public companies, the stakes include more than efficiency. ASC 360 requires impairment recognition when evidence shows an asset’s carrying value exceeds its fair value. If a piece of equipment has been damaged or idled for 18 months and the ERP still carries it at book value, the company may have a mandatory impairment event it does not know about yet.
The answer to a structural problem is a structural fix, not a better annual process.
SoloTruth ARM was built on this premise. Rather than auditing assets periodically and reconciling after the fact, the platform creates a continuous evidence layer above the ERP. Physical assets are verified on an ongoing basis through a combination of RFID and GPS signals, mobile inspection workflows, and document processing. Every verification event produces a timestamped, geo-tagged record that links directly to the corresponding asset in the financial system.
When a discrepancy is found, it does not wait for the annual audit to surface it. The Axon Ivy orchestration layer routes the correction through the appropriate approval workflow and posts the result to the ERP. The financial record updates based on verified evidence, not assumed continuity.
For years, the industry has operated on an implicit assumption: that the ERP’s fixed asset register, updated at acquisition and depreciated on schedule, provides an adequate basis for asset valuations and financial reporting.
It does not. It provides a record of what was true at the time of purchase. Everything that happened after purchase, which is most of what determines current value and existence, is assumed rather than verified.
SoloTruth ARM exists to correct that assumption. Not with a better audit. With continuous proof.
Coverage: SoloTruth launches asset platform to tackle ghost assets — CFOtech / TechDay Network, April 2026
Source: Kroll Advisory, “Invisible Risks, Measurable Returns,” December 9, 2025 (Masha Lewis). 8,000+ fixed asset engagements annually across 36 countries.
Learn more: solotruth.com