Xero Fixed Asset Tracker Software: What Xero Covers and What to Add

A business has grown past the point where anyone remembers what it owns. Forty laptops, three vans, a fit-out in the new office, and a spreadsheet of assets nobody has updated since March. The accountant asks for this year's additions and disposals. The office manager asks who has the spare laptop. The spreadsheet can't answer either.

So someone searches for Xero fixed asset tracker software. Others call it fixed asset management software, or a fixed asset register. They all mean one place that lists everything the business owns, what it cost, what it's worth now and where it is.

Xero has one built in, and it's the starting point whatever you add. This post covers what it tracks, how to get the most out of it, where it runs out, and which kind of software fills each gap.

What Xero's fixed asset tracker already does

Fixed assets are things a business buys to use for more than a year: vehicles, machines, computers, furniture, an office fit-out. Xero's fixed assets feature keeps the list, which accountants call a register, and handles the accounting that goes with it.

Each asset in Xero can hold:

• a name and an asset number, which Xero assigns in sequence and you can change
• a purchase date, a purchase price and an asset type, such as "Computer equipment"
• a serial number and a warranty expiry date
• a free-text description
• up to two tracking categories, Xero's labels for splitting figures by department, region or site
• file attachments, such as the invoice or a photo, added in January 2025

You can add an asset by hand, import a list from a spreadsheet, or create one from a bill. Xero then works out depreciation: the part of an asset's cost booked as an expense each period as it wears out. It offers straight line (the same charge every period) and diminishing value (a percentage of what's left, so the charge shrinks over time).

It posts the depreciation to the accounts, and it records a sale or disposal along with the gain or loss on it. It also runs three reports: a depreciation schedule, a disposal schedule and a fixed asset reconciliation, which checks the register against the balance sheet.

It's also where everything else connects. The tracking apps we checked send new assets into it as drafts, and dedicated fixed asset apps post their journals to Xero. So it's worth setting up well, whatever you add later.

Setting it up to track more than cost

Most registers in Xero hold the minimum: a name, a date and a price. A few habits make the same register far more useful, and give any tool you add later clean data to start from.

1. Make the asset number the label. Print each asset number on a sticker and put it on the item. Xero lets you change the numbering, so it can match tags you already use. The register and the item now share a reference, and an asset count becomes a walk round the office with the list.
2. Fill in the serial number and warranty date. They don't affect depreciation, but they're what IT and the insurer ask for. The serial number is also how you tell twenty identical laptops apart.
3. Use a tracking category for location. Xero's own definition of a register includes "original cost, location, life expectancy, and other relevant details", but there's no location field. Its suggestion is to "set up a tracking category for location, then assign it to each asset". That works for a handful of sites. It records a site, not a room or a person, and it uses one of the two tracking categories Xero lets you have active at once.
4. Attach the invoice. When the auditor asks for proof of cost, it's one click away.
5. Match asset types to your accounts. Each asset type carries its own accounts and depreciation settings, so a new asset only needs its type and the rest follows. If the accounts show "Motor vehicles" and "Office equipment", have a type for each.
6. Register drafts every month. An asset created from a bill starts as a draft. Drafts aren't depreciated and don't appear in the fixed asset reports until someone registers them, so a month of forgotten drafts is a month of missing depreciation.
7. Run the reconciliation every month. A disposal or correction posted straight to a fixed asset account as a journal never reaches the register. The reconciliation report shows the difference while it's still small and easy to trace.

Where Xero's register runs out

Set up well, Xero handles the accounting for a modest list. The limits show up in four places.

Physical tracking. There's no field for who holds an asset, no barcode or QR code scanning, no check-out and return, no service reminders and no asset-count tool beyond printing the list. Xero describes the feature as supporting "depreciation calculations and reporting", and that's what it's built for.

Volume. Assets are disposed of one at a time. 475 users asked for bulk disposal, and in November 2025 Xero said it "isn't on our current roadmap." Revaluing an asset to what it's worth today isn't supported either, and Xero told the 164 users who asked that it's "not currently on our roadmap". With hundreds of assets and regular changes, that's a lot of clicking.

Accounting beyond the basics. Depreciation is straight line or diminishing value, with nothing for a machine that wears out by hours used rather than by years. There's no separate tax book on the newer version of fixed assets: Xero says "it's not possible to turn tax reporting on." There's no lease accounting, and no way to split one asset into parts that wear out at different rates.

One company at a time. Each Xero organisation has its own register. A group of three companies has three registers and no combined view.

Year-end adds one more. Xero's depreciation schedule isn't laid out as the movement note statutory accounts need, with opening cost, additions, disposals and closing cost by asset class. That gap, and the missing tax book, are covered in Xero Fixed Asset Register: 6 Limits and 3 Workarounds.

When to add fixed asset tracker software to Xero

Which software helps depends on which gap you've hit.

If the gap is physical, look at asset tracking apps: barcode or QR labels, scanning with a phone, check-out to staff, service reminders. Some connect only to QuickBooks, so check the vendor's own integration page for Xero. The ones we checked send new items to Xero as draft assets for the accountant to register. Ask what happens when an item is scrapped in the app. A sync that only creates new assets leaves the disposal to be recorded in Xero by hand.

If the gap is accounting, dedicated fixed asset apps such as AssetAccountant and Asset.Guru add tax depreciation and revaluations, and post the journals to Xero. The trade-off is that the app becomes your register. Xero receives journals, and the asset detail lives in the app. That's a sound design, but it's another subscription and another place your numbers live.

If the gap is reporting, meaning the movement note, a group view or a check that the register agrees with the balance sheet, neither kind of app is mainly built for it. That's the next section.

Whichever kind you shortlist, ask:

1. Does it connect to Xero, according to the vendor's own documentation, and which way does the sync run?
2. When an item is disposed of in the app, does Xero hear about it?
3. Which system calculates depreciation? If both do, they'll disagree.
4. What links an item in the app to the asset in Xero, and does it survive a rename?
5. Does it cover more than one Xero organisation?

Where Cheetah fits

Cheetah isn't fixed asset software, and it doesn't put labels on anything. It builds the reports that sit on top of Xero's register.

Take the fixed asset working paper an accounting firm prepares for every client file. Xero holds the data, but its Depreciation Schedule isn't laid out as a working paper. Accountants on Xero's ideas board say they even have to set up its columns in every client file. So the register gets rebuilt in a spreadsheet, client by client, year after year.

We built a report that reads each client's assets straight from Xero's register and writes the working paper in one click:

• every asset, grouped by class, with its number, description, purchase date and useful life
• cost brought forward, additions, disposals and cost carried forward
• accumulated depreciation brought forward, the charge for each month of the year, and the total carried forward
• net book value, with closing balances and class subtotals as formulas a reviewer can trace

The same asset data feeds the plant and equipment note in the client's financial statements: cost and depreciation by class, this year and last, with leased assets in a note of their own. Nobody retypes the register into the accounts.

The classes in both come from the asset types set up in Xero, which is one more reason to match them to the accounts. It's the same idea behind proper monthly management accounts: Xero holds the data, and the report is built on top.

If your register in Xero is in good shape but the working paper and the accounts note still get rebuilt by hand, Cheetah might be worth a look.

The short version

Whether you call it a fixed asset tracker, fixed asset management software or a fixed asset register, start with the one inside Xero. Set it up with asset numbers on labels, serial numbers, a tracking category for location and a monthly reconciliation. Then match what you add to the gap you've hit: a tracking app for scanning and custody, a dedicated fixed asset app for tax depreciation and revaluations, and a reporting layer for the working-paper register and the note in the accounts.

For the wider set of ways to get reports Xero doesn't produce, see Xero Custom Reports: 4 Ways to Build Them in 2026.