Equipment Appraisal Blog | Understanding Machinery Appraisals

When you run a healthcare practice, your machinery is a big part of your business assets. As a large investment, knowing what it's worth is important to knowing where your practice's finances stand. However, it's also one of the most overlooked parts of your business' overall worth, often only looked at when it's time to sell the equipment or the practice. When you take the time to really keep track of equipment values, you can make smarter decisions that can improve the overall value of your entire practice. Here's why appraising medical equipment helps you keep a pulse on your business' bottom line.

Stat: Why appraising medical equipment is vital to the health of your practice

Why is it important to have your business bank accounts balanced on a regular basis? Why do you take a look at your profit and loss statements? Why do you make sure bad debts are pursued? Much like these other areas of financial concern for your practice, medical equipment appraisal helps you determine your practice's worth in the marketplace.

Like many other types of professional equipment, medical equipment depreciates in value over time. This can happen due to wear and tear, the appearance of new features in updated models, industry shifts to newer technologies and other issues. As it depreciates, your practice loses asset values. With the changes in the tax code, this process is becoming more important than ever, as you can now depreciate the full value of your machinery in a much shorter time period. Where does that fall with your updated tax strategy?

When your medical equipment is appraised, the appraiser looks at a number of factors. What condition is the machinery in? Has it been well maintained and received repairs as needed? Does it currently need repairs or have non-functional features that will impact its value? What about the market? Is this a common manufacturer or model that has a reputation for exceptional performance that will hold its resale value down the road? Is it an odd brand that will be hard to find a buyer for? Has it been largely replaced by more modern equipment that has features that have become standard? Are there features that provide additional benefits to a prospective buyer that are not typical for that type of machinery?

These factors impact the overall value of the machinery and help you determine how much insurance you need, what it's worth in legal proceedings or what you should expect in property tax assessments. By knowing the value, you know whether the value represented by the outside concern is accurate or not.

When you take the time for appraising medical equipment as a regular part of your practice's overall financial management, you can quickly determine which equipment should be sold before it loses value and what machinery may provide significantly more value to your practice before it needs to be replaced. When you decide to have your medical machinery valued, make sure that you verify that the appraiser you're working with is an experienced certified equipment appraiser. This helps ensure that they have the expertise and experience needed to provide you with an accurate value that will hold up in a wide range of areas, including insurance, taxes, legal and financial circles.

When you work in trucking, your equipment is your biggest investment, and at the same time, it's the one that tends to age the fastest and lose value. For that reason, appraising truck tractors and trailers is an important part of protecting those assets from loss due to theft, accidents and disasters. But what happens when your trucks are being valued by an outside company? Here's a quick look at the overall process and the nuances of tractor trailer appraisal.

Roll On: What's Involved in Appraising Truck Tractors and Trailers

Every day, tractor trailers cover hundreds of miles, adding up to hundreds of thousands of miles annually. Every minute, as these assets cover ground, their value is decreasing. How can you account for the change in value of this machinery to your insurance company, local tax assessor, finance company or court when you need to prove what your assets are actually worth?

Imagine a small trucking company that is run by a husband and wife team. During a divorce, the party who is leaving the business claims the value of the year-old equipment at purchase value, because it's the latest time that their tractor trailers were given value. But that doesn't account for the difference that several hundred thousand miles, accidents and damage that can happen while going down the road. When you have an equipment appraisal performed on your tractor trailers, it helps provide a third-party value for your machinery that is impartial to the proceedings.

Nobody likes dealing with property taxes, but when the same assessor is judging a wide range of assets including real estate, small cars, industrial equipment and semis, is it any wonder that sometimes they get things wrong? At the same time, tax assessment offices often demand that you bear the burden of proof when trying to fight a  bad tax assessment. Having an appraisal performed is one of the best ways to immediately prove value of a piece of equipment when an assessment is wrong.

When you have your semis and trailers appraised, the appraiser looks at a wide range of issues that can impact your equipment's value. Unlike other machinery which stays in the same location and often ages in very similar ways, your trucks and trailers are often sent to very different areas that can change how they age. By using a certified equipment appraiser who has trucking experience, you know that they're not going to provide the same value to a semi in pristine condition that has done long-haul work in the Midwest and a truck that has had significant damage in the East Coast's inner cities, even if their mileage is similar.

A good appraiser will also look at the reason the appraisal is needed. There's a big difference between appraising for the value of replacing a truck that is currently in service compared to the value of a semi when a partnership is being dissolved or an ancient tractor finally bites the dust. By appraising truck tractors and trailers for your business, you're protecting your company's bottom line. It ensures you have the documentation needed to process insurance claims, secure financing for expansion or upgrades to machinery, deal with tax assessment issues or work through purchasing or selling a logistics company. Make sure that you work with a certified equipment appraiser who has experience in trucking, shipping or logistics to ensure your appraisal is as accurate as possible.

When your company deals with serious machinery, it's important to know its value for insurance and tax purposes, right? Actually, there are a number of other reasons why appraising industrial equipment assets can help improve your company's situation, flexibility and adaptability in the marketplace. Here's a quick look at how you can use your equipment values to leverage everything your business has to offer, allowing you to improve your position in the market.

How appraising industrial equipment helps improve your company's bottom line

Whether you're processing materials, manufacturing products or otherwise have industrial equipment involved in your business, you know you've got a lot invested in your machinery. But is it really that important to know exactly what your equipment values are? After all, it's accounted for in your books through depreciation, which are based on commonly used tables, right?

Unfortunately, depreciation tables rarely provide an accurate representation of your equipment values. Why? Because they're an average amount of asset value loss over time, they tend to be overly generalized. Virtually every business has equipment that has been fully depreciated for years, yet that equipment continues to deliver value through its use on a regular basis. If that machinery were to suddenly fail, the business would suffer for its loss in terms of production, and an investment would need to be made in terms of new machinery, costing the company capital that it may have already allocated to other operations.

Most companies also have equipment that has failed before it has been completely depreciated. Whether it was a press that was expected to be used hard and abused to a certain extent for a particular project or machinery that has simply failed before it was fully depreciated, it will still show up on the books as having value, even though its only value is as scrap metal. These situations, where equipment has excess or lack of value in the books that doesn't represent real-world values, can create a false sense of your company's assets. This, in turn, can create serious problems when you use those bad figures for securing loans or as a basis for expanding the company's operations.

What about market conditions? When you depreciate a piece of equipment, you have an expectation that the depreciated value may reflect current market demand for that machinery. But when the market is growing, that equipment may be worth more than its depreciated value. This can be problematic when a piece of equipment fails and you base the replacement cost on the depreciated value of the equipment. When this happens and the market is strong, you may have a difficult time finding the machinery you need at the price you expect. Conversely, when the market is poor, you may have a hard time finding a buyer at a higher price point. Machinery appraisal helps provide you with an accurate assessment of the equipment's real value.

By taking the time for appraising industrial equipment, you can learn a great deal about your machinery's condition, performance and value. This, in turn, allows you to leverage that value and condition to your company's best possible benefit and growth. But how do you start the process of having your industrial machinery appraised? Start by finding a certified equipment appraiser who has experience with your industry's machinery. Certification ensures that the appraiser knows exactly how to determine your equipment's value for your specific situation.

When your world is your restaurant, your equipment is a vital part of keeping that world turning. Appraising restaurant equipment is a vital part of staying on top of your business' assets. But how does the appraisal process work with this type of machinery? By having a solid understanding of how the process works, you'll be able to better manage your restaurant's assets. Here's a quick overview of the process to help get you started.

What's involved when appraising restaurant equipment?

One of the first questions you'll often hear when trying to find an appraiser for your restaurant equipment is what is the reason for the appraisal? Many businesses don't understand why this is important, but depending on the situation, many appraisers are legally required to use particular types of appraisal methodologies. Typically this happens in a divorce, estate settlement or dissolution of a partnership where the court is involved in ensuring that both parties get a fair share of the profits.

Are you trying to find out the value because you've suffered an insurance loss? If you have equipment that required specific conditions to operate properly, such as water lines at a specific pressure, being bolted to the floor or similar factors that may need to be changed with the replacement or require significant work to remove, knowing the value of the equipment including the removal costs is important to ensure that your business is reimbursed for all the expenses related to the loss rather than just the cost to replace the machinery involved in the loss.

Another area of interest is whether the machinery is in good operating condition or if it has issues, such as a non-working burner, occasional leaks and similar problems. Because these issues can often limit the performance of the equipment in your restaurant, they can impact the overall value of the machinery, whether you're selling it or preparing your business for sale. When you work with an appraiser who has experience in the restaurant or food service business, they have a much better grasp of the equipment involved and how those factors can limit your production.

What about the equipment's expected useful lifespan? Because experienced restaurant equipment appraisers have extensive experience looking at a number of equipment options, they know the signs of failure for common models. If a piece of equipment is making a specific noise, the gears or belts have issues, it has signs of failing systems or similar issues, it's much easier for an appraiser to pin down the exact issue and determine how that will impact the equipment's useful lifespan. 

If you're considering using your restaurant equipment as collateral for a business loan for your restaurant, have you taken the time to have an appraisal performed to determine the machinery's equipment prior to signing the contract? Many financial institutions don't go to the depth and length of equipment values, because they work with a wide range of loans. Instead, the documentation is often written up with incorrect values that shortchange your company's true asset values.

Appraising restaurant equipment is a complex process and should be undertaken with the help of an experienced, certified appraiser. It's an important part of your business process because understanding how the process works can help you figure out how your assets change in value over their usable life. Make sure to work with an equipment appraiser who has experience in the restaurant industry.