Hotels & assets
Ghost Assets
Items still on the fixed-asset register that no longer physically exist — scrapped, traded in, or removed during a refurbishment and never written off. They inflate insurance, property tax and net book value.
The causes are entirely mundane. Nobody falsifies a register. Disposals happen on site, at speed, mid-renovation — and the paperwork that would remove the asset from the books is the one step with no deadline attached, so it is the step that does not happen.
The consequence is not just accounting. Preventive maintenance gets scheduled against assets that do not exist, so a technician is sent to find a pump that is not there — while a real asset, on no register anywhere, goes unmaintained.