VirtuSpect is now SoloTruth. Your Single Source of Truth for asset information
The structural discrepancy between what an ERP system records about a company's fixed assets and the physical reality of those assets.
ERP systems track financial transactions: acquisition cost, depreciation, recorded disposals. They cannot independently verify whether a physical asset still exists, is in the correct location, or is in the condition the record assumes. Every undocumented disposal, informal asset move, or cannibalized piece of equipment widens this gap. Most companies discover it once a year during a physical inventory. The rest of the year, they operate on a register that is, at best, approximate.
SoloTruth coined this term to describe a structural design problem, not a bookkeeping failure.
See also: The Fixed Asset Evidence Problem
A fixed asset that appears in a company's financial records but no longer physically exists or is no longer in service.
Ghost assets accumulate when assets are retired, cannibalized, lost, or stolen without a corresponding disposal entry in the ERP system. According to Kroll Advisory, 10 to 30 percent of fixed assets at typical enterprises are ghosts. Ghost assets inflate balance sheet values, cause overpayment on insurance premiums and property taxes, and create audit deficiencies under PCAOB long-lived asset testing standards.
SoloTruth ARM eliminates ghost assets by continuously reconciling physical verification evidence against the fixed asset register.
See also: What the Fixed Asset Evidence Gap Actually Costs
A physical asset that exists on the floor but is missing from the fixed asset register.
The inverse of a ghost asset. Zombie assets are added during capital projects, transferred in from other locations, or acquired informally, without anyone creating the corresponding financial record. They are untracked for depreciation, insurance, and compliance purposes. Kroll Advisory data suggests that up to 65 percent of enterprise fixed asset records contain errors of some kind, including both ghost and zombie assets.
The process of physically confirming that assets recorded in a fixed asset register actually exist, are in the recorded location, and match the recorded condition.
Traditional fixed asset verification is periodic, sampling-based, and backward-looking, typically conducted annually during audit preparation. It tells you what was probably true at a point in time. Continuous fixed asset verification uses IoT sensors, AI extraction, and orchestration software to keep the asset register synchronized with physical reality on an ongoing basis.
See also: Why Fixed Asset Verification Is Finally Practical
A software category for continuously verifying the physical existence, location, and condition of fixed assets and reconciling evidence against ERP financial records.
Asset Relationship Management (ARM) sits above ERP systems as an evidence layer. While an ERP records what assets should exist based on transactions, an ARM system captures and maintains proof of what actually exists, using field inspections, RFID and GPS smart tags, AI document extraction, and orchestration workflows that push verified updates back into the ERP. SoloTruth ARM is the first commercial platform in this category.
An operational approach to fixed asset management in which physical verification of assets is ongoing rather than periodic.
Continuous asset verification uses IoT sensors, RFID and GPS tracking, AI extraction, and orchestration software to keep fixed asset records synchronized with physical reality in near-real-time. It replaces the once-a-year physical inventory and audit-prep scramble with a live control layer that operates between audits. The Omdia 2025 IoT Enterprise Survey found that 60 percent of manufacturers are already deploying stationary asset monitoring at scale. Continuous verification connects that sensor data to the fixed asset financial subledger.
See also: Why Fixed Asset Verification Is Finally Practical
Verifiable, documented proof of a fixed asset's identity, location, and condition, attached to the financial record and available for audit, insurance, and compliance purposes.
Fixed asset evidence is the output of a physical verification process. It is not an ERP field or a recorded transaction. It is documentation: inspection photos, RFID scan records, GPS coordinates, work orders, and supporting documents that prove the asset described in the register matches what physically exists. Evidence is what auditors, insurers, and acquirers require when they need more than a system record.
The process of comparing physical asset verification data, including existence, location, condition, and attributes, against fixed asset records in an ERP system and resolving discrepancies.
ERP asset reconciliation is the step that transforms field evidence into trusted financial data. Discrepancies identified during physical verification, ghost assets, missing assets, location errors, condition differences, are reviewed, approved, and pushed as corrections into the ERP fixed asset subledger. Historically this required manual review at every step. Modern platforms using AI and orchestration automate exception routing and ERP write-back, replacing manual reconciliation workflows.
SoloTruth builds evidence-based fixed asset management software. Learn more at solotruth.com
