System for linking financial asset records with networked assets

Abstract

A computer system to reconcile hard assets carried on the financial data reporting computer systems of a corporation or government entity with actual inventory assets discovered on the networks of said entity. Automatic discovery of inventory assets is performed by executing scripts specified in fingerprints of the types of machines the system can recognize. When a machine is found at a live P address, the fingerprint scripts determine the operating system type and extract data from the operating system regarding the attributes of the machine. Hard assets are then imported from the financial data reporting computer system, and automatic reconciliation rules are drafted by a user and run on the asset data to find inventory assets which match hard assets. Linking or pointer data is established to record each match. Then unmatched inventory and hard assets are displayed and manual matching occurs where in the user points to and selects inventory assets which match particular hard assets. Linking or pointer data is then generated for each manual match.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0001] Corporations usually keep two different sets of records to track their capital assets and leased assets. This does not happen intentionally. It is just a historical accident based upon the way software for use in business developed. Assets are tracked for financial reporting purposes in financial systems, such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) Fixed Asset modules such as SAP, Oracle and Peoplesoft. ERP systems are used to track purchasing, accounts payable, orders, capitalized assets, etc. One of the modules of ERP systems is to track fixed assets. ERP systems are used for the financial reporting requirements of large corporations. [0002] The fixed asset module will be used by the financial people in the corporation to make entries for capital assets that are purchased. For example, assume a Sun server is purchased. The entry for this transaction will show that on a particular date, a Sun server was purchased for whatever the amount was and tha...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0031] A system within the genus of the automatic discovery of IT assets software and hardware (hereafter somtimes referred to as the automatic asset discovery system) provides methods and apparatus to collect information of different types that characterize a business entity and consolidate all these different types of information about the hardware, software and financial aspects of the entity in a single logical data store. Although the automatic discovery of IT assets software and hardware is capable of discovering information about non IT assets such as leases, its capabilities to discovery the attributes of IT assets on the network will be the focus of use of this system in the present invention to do financial linkage. The data store and the data collection system will have three characteristics that allow the overall system to scale well among the plethora of disparate data sources.

[0032] The first of these characteristics that all species within the genus of automatic asset discovery systems will share is a common way to describe all information as element/attributes structures. Specifically, the generic way to describe all information creates a different element/attribute data structure for each different type of information, e.g., server, software application program, software license. Each element in an element/attribute data structure contains a definition of the data type and length of a field to be filled in with the name of the asset to which the element corresponds. Each element/att

Problems solved by technology

If the label was not attached to the asset or the IT department personnel do not scan the label, a discrepancy can be created.

These discrepancies represents a risk to the corporation.

If it takes such a charge but the assets are still being used, that creates an audit risk.

Discrepancies complicate that picture and increase the risk that the charge will be excessive or assets actually being used but which are not on the books do not get written off.

In large corporations where there are large numbers of assets, the two sets of asset records are rarely if every reconciled because of the enormity of the project and its difficulty and the fact that, for the most part, it has to be done manually.

Reconciliation is a labor intensive process, and IT departments know that, even if they did it, as soon as they were done, their report would be likely to be obsolete and get more and more obsolete as every day passed.

This labor intensive nature of the process plus the fact that an ongoing reconciliation is required to keep the two sets of records accurate and consistent tends to discourage IT departments from even trying to do a reconciliation.

The result is that a corporation's financial systems may be inadvertently, substantially under-reporting or over-reporting the corporation's assets on the corporate balance sheets which can be a serious violation of U.S. law.

If the corporation is large and has many assets, the external a

Images