How to decide whether to repair or replace an asset
At some point continued repair costs more than replacement. UniAsset gives you the figures to know when.
Requirements
- Available on: Orbit, Odyssey, Cosmos — depreciation and cost analytics
- Roles: Owner, Admin, Manager
The three numbers
| Number | What it tells you | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Total cost of ownership | Purchase price plus every recorded maintenance cost | The asset page |
| Net book value | What the asset is still worth on the books after depreciation | The asset page and the Depreciation report |
| Cost risk | Whether maintenance spend has become disproportionate to purchase price | Cost-risk filter on the asset list |
Steps
- Open the asset and read its total cost of ownership against its purchase cost.
- Read the service record history. Look at the shape, not just the total — accelerating repair frequency is a stronger signal than a single expensive job.
- Check for reopened work orders. A chain of reopened orders on one asset means repairs are not holding. Each reopen is linked to its parent, so the chain is visible.
- Check the net book value. An asset near the end of its depreciable life with rising costs is a straightforward replacement case.
- Compare against replacement cost — the figure UniAsset does not hold. This is your input to the decision.
Using cost risk to find candidates
Rather than checking assets one at a time, filter the asset list by cost risk. That surfaces every asset whose maintenance spend has become disproportionate to what it cost to buy.
Work down that list. It is the shortest route from "we spend too much on maintenance" to "these six machines are why".
What the numbers won't tell you
UniAsset gives you recorded cost. It does not know:
- What a replacement costs today
- The cost of downtime while you wait for one
- Whether a newer model would cut running costs
- Whether the asset is safety-critical enough that age alone justifies replacement
The decision is yours. What UniAsset removes is the guesswork about what has already been spent.
Important Financial figures in UniAsset are derived from recorded data, never estimated. Where the underlying data is incomplete, the product says so rather than producing a confident number built on absent data.
Common mistakes
Judging by the last repair bill alone. One expensive repair on an otherwise reliable asset is not a pattern. Read the whole history.
Comparing maintenance spend against current market value instead of purchase price. Cost risk compares against what you paid, which is the figure your maintenance budget was justified against.
Deciding on an asset with a thin record. If maintenance history is missing, total cost of ownership is understated. Asset intelligence flags assets with missing purchase data or absent maintenance history — fix those first.
Replacing the asset and deleting the record. Dispose of it properly on Odyssey and above, or archive it. Either way the history survives and can still be used for audit.
Troubleshooting
Cost risk shows nothing. Cost risk needs both a purchase cost on the asset and recorded maintenance spend. Assets missing either will not be assessed.
Net book value is blank. Depreciation is configured per category — method, useful life, rate, and residual value. An asset with no category, or a category with no depreciation configuration, has no book value. See Asset value and depreciation report.
Total cost of ownership looks too low. Check that work orders were closed, not just completed, and that materials were logged as materials rather than mentioned in notes.
The cost analytics are locked. They need Orbit or above.
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