Fixed assets are the part of the balance sheet that gets the least attention between audits. Depreciation runs on a schedule, the register grows by a few lines a quarter, and nobody looks closely until an auditor asks where a forklift is. It's also the part of NetSuite that fewest people know how to query, because the Fixed Assets Management module keeps its records in custom record types rather than a table with an obvious name.
The Sonar edition of my prompt library added six prompts for this area. They cover the lifecycle end to end: what an asset is worth when you dispose of it, whether it's impaired before then, whether it's where the register says it is, what it costs to keep running, whether its useful life assumption still holds, and whether it's being used at all.
If you're new to this, Sonar AI is an AI agent that runs inside NetSuite. Every prompt in the library is a playbook that I engineered and tested against live NetSuite data, and you run it inside your own account, against your own records.
Finding the Register First
All six prompts start the same way, with a configuration check before any analysis. The asset register lives in the FAM custom records, not a fixed asset table, and the depreciation history is a forward schedule that includes periods that haven't happened yet. A query that sums the whole history overstates accumulated depreciation, so every prompt filters to periods through the analysis date. On OneWorld accounts the assets carry their own subsidiary field, and on multi-book accounts the depreciation rows carry a book. The prompts resolve all of that up front and state the scope in the report.
That may sound like housekeeping, but it's where most fixed asset analysis goes wrong in practice, and it's the reason these prompts exist as a set rather than as a paragraph in a general finance prompt.
Leaving the Register
Asset Disposal Gain/Loss Calculator handles the moment an asset leaves. It pulls the disposal population for a period, calculates depreciation through the disposal date rather than the last depreciation run, which matters for anything disposed mid-period, and computes the gain or loss on both a book basis and a tax basis where tax data exists. The two usually differ, and the prompt says so rather than picking one. For every disposal it produces a balanced journal entry and matches it to what actually posted. It won't invent costs, proceeds, depreciation classes, or bonus depreciation assumptions. If the tax detail isn't in the account, the tax side is reported as unavailable.
Asset Impairment Screener handles the case where an asset should be written down before it leaves. It follows the two-step process that US GAAP requires: identify impairment indicators first, then run the recoverability test only on assets with indicators. The prompt has to document the threshold it used for "significant," and it has to record the clean conclusion too. For every asset with no indicators, the report says which indicators were checked, because an auditor wants to see the screen, not just the exceptions. And it won't reverse a prior impairment, because under US GAAP those losses are permanent.
Where It Is and What It Costs
Asset Location and Assignment Auditor is the forklift question. It compares the register's location and department assignments against what the business can confirm, and it classifies every discrepancy by root cause: wrong location, ghost asset, unrecorded asset, or transferred without a record. Severity is weighted by carrying value, so an asset over $100,000 that's missing or mislocated is critical and a $400 monitor isn't. Two rules I'd point to. The prompt won't conclude that a ghost asset should be written off without investigation, because it may be sitting in a different location. And it won't assume an unrecorded asset is company property, because it may be leased or borrowed. The report includes the match rate alongside the exceptions, since auditors need both.
Asset Maintenance Cost Tracker follows the running cost. It gathers maintenance spend per asset, which requires a custom link between maintenance transactions and the asset record that the prompt confirms exists before it queries, and it computes two ratios: annual maintenance to original cost, with a planning trigger at 20%, and annual maintenance to current net book value, with a trigger at 75%. The prompt requires multi-year data before it will stage an asset's lifecycle, because one year is a snapshot. It separates one-time events from recurring patterns. And it won't recommend replacement without also modeling the alternative of continuing to operate, because the ratio alone doesn't make that decision.
Whether the Assumptions Still Hold
Asset Useful Life Reviewer examines the number that drives depreciation and almost never gets revisited. It lists the register with each asset's assigned life, summarizes lives by asset class, and compares them against benchmarks that must be anchored to IRS Publication 946 or a documented industry source. It's careful about a confusion that's common in practice: a MACRS recovery period is a tax convention, not the best estimate of a book life, and the prompt won't treat the two as interchangeable. When it does recommend a change, it applies the change prospectively, as accounting standards require for a change in estimate, and it quantifies the depreciation impact first, so that immaterial adjustments don't generate work. With low confidence, meaning no disposal history and no clear pattern, it declines to recommend a specific adjustment at all.
Asset Utilization Tracker asks whether the asset is earning its keep. The honest answer is that NetSuite rarely holds utilization data directly, so the prompt works from proxies, revenue and transaction volume by department and location, and it has to state the proxy and its confidence with every rate it reports. No proxy means "insufficient data," not a made-up number. It applies a multi-factor test before flagging anything as underutilized, because a rate alone isn't enough, and it won't flag a seasonal asset without a full year of data. For every asset it does flag, it models four options: keep, redeploy, sell, or retire. And it won't apply revenue-based return math to support assets like HVAC or networking, which don't earn revenue and aren't supposed to.
Wrapping Up
None of these prompts makes a decision. They calculate, screen, compare, and rank, and they're explicit about the judgment calls that stay with a person: the impairment threshold, the replacement decision, the write-off. What they change is how often the register gets looked at. A screen that took a week of an analyst's time once a year can now run in an afternoon whenever someone wonders.
All six are in the paid tier of the Sonar AI Prompt Library, under Fixed Assets: Asset Disposal Gain/Loss Calculator, Asset Impairment Screener, Asset Location and Assignment Auditor, Asset Maintenance Cost Tracker, Asset Useful Life Reviewer, and Asset Utilization Tracker.