Capital expenditures refer to expenses that you use to purchase, maintain, improve, or upgrade long-term assets for the purpose of improving your company’s capacity and efficiency. Those long-term assets are typically physical, non-consumable, and fixed—like infrastructure, equipment, or property—and their life is useful beyond a single accounting period. Capital expenditures may also refer to the purchase of goods, such as new land, machinery, equipment, warehouses, company vehicles, furniture, and software, and intangible items like licenses and patents. To make sure that the money is well-spent on these assets, you need to do careful capital expenditure planning and tracking.
Capital expenditures have a long-term effect on your business, so any decision relating to them must be carefully planned and executed. Current decisions also tend to have a big impact on your company’s future activities and the way outsiders view your business. That said, your budgeting process and long-term strategic goals must be considered before authorizing capital expenditures, which tend to be irreversible, so any mistake could result in significant losses. Capital expenditure planning will make sure that you are making informed decisions when investing in something new, which can be of use to your business.
Tracking capital expenditures is a crucial process as these are typically expensive and normally depreciate over time as they are put to use. Careful planning and tracking could address measurement and cost estimation issues, avoid unpredictability, and ensure proper budgeting in the long run.
The process of capital expenditure planning will be easier when you have the right software to streamline the expenditures process, standardize requests, and track expenditures. The right software will also help you determine if you are spending beyond the approved amounts. It consolidates all important information to help you track your funding. Likewise, it empowers your company to comply with its policies, so you can stop worrying about unauthorized expenditures in the long run.
