Wichita County Commissioners Court on Sept. 19 heard an update on the county's capital assets inventory and plans to use a barcode machine to improve fixed-asset tracking. County staff said legacy system groupings left about $3.9 million in assets not individually identified.

A county staff member said the county needs to verify a barcode scanner purchased two years ago and then use it to capture asset information at departments. "I gotta look into that machine that I bought 2 years ago and make sure that it's still the most up to date and, go from there," the staff member said. Staff said the scanner will upload data to Munoz, the county asset system.

The finance officer explained that prior capital-asset records contained grouped entries: "there were assets that were just grouped together in the legacy system. And so there's, like, 3,900,000 that's just grouped together and not actually identifies what it is and what makes up that balance. And so we are working to make sure that all of that's accounted for appropriately going forward before we completely turn off the old system." The court was told the sheriff's office asset audit is being wrapped up and that staff will then address other fixed assets.

No formal actions were taken; staff described the audit and the barcode-upload plan and were asked to continue the work. The county did not set a public deadline during the meeting but indicated the sheriff's office audit would finish first and that the broader reconciliation will follow.