Annual Asset Inspection for FY2026 in Thai Government Agencies: Who to Appoint, What to Check, the 30-Working-Day Report, and What the State Audit Office Finds Most Often — Government Guide EP.5

12 October 2026 is the eighth working day of fiscal year 2027, and the people appointed to inspect supplies and assets in every Thai government agency are now walking the floor, counting physical items against the register. Clause 213 of the 2017 regulation requires the inspection to start on the first working day of the fiscal year and the report to be submitted within 30 working days of that start. This is part five of our government fixed-asset series, following the asset lifecycle from procurement to disposal. It covers only the annual inspection: the appointment order, what must be checked, the report and who receives it, what to do when items are damaged or missing, disposal and write-off, and, to close, the findings the State Audit Office (SAO) actually reported last year.

1. The Annual Inspection Calendar, from Today to the Day Items Leave the Books

The regulation sets five deadlines. The first two have passed or are running now; the rest arrive before the end of the year. The table counts from the first working day of fiscal year 2027, Thursday 1 October 2026.

Source: 2017 regulation, clauses 213, 214, 215 and 218 · 13 November counts the start day as day one and excludes the public holidays on 13 October (King Bhumibol Memorial Day) and 23 October (Chulalongkorn Day). Agencies that started on another day, or observe extra holidays, should recount on their own calendar.

2. The Inspector Must Not Be the Supplies Officer Who Keeps the Items

Clause 213 has the head of the agency, or the head of the supplies unit, appoint "a person responsible for inspecting supplies who is not an officer under clause 205". The officer referred to is whoever keeps, records and issues the items. The principle is that the person checking cannot be the person holding, the segregation of duties that internal auditors and the State Audit Office look at first. Agency manuals therefore state plainly that supplies officers may not be appointed as inspectors, and several agencies delegate the appointment down to directors of bureaus or divisions so that it can be done in time in September.

The regulation does not require a committee or a minimum number of people for the annual inspection itself; one person or a panel both comply. That differs from the fact-finding stage under clause 214, where common practice is a committee of one chair and at least two members. What the supplies officer must do before 1 October is prepare the documents for the inspector: the materials ledger, the asset control register, receipt evidence such as delivery notes and acceptance reports, issue evidence such as requisition and loan forms, the buildings and structures report, and documents showing how each asset was acquired, such as contract copies or donation records.

3. Four Things to Check, Not Just a Count

The word "count" leads many agencies to treat this as walking around scanning asset tags until every one is found. Clause 213 defines two parts: checking the receipt and issue of supplies over the past year, and counting the supplies remaining at the end of that period. The Department of Agricultural Extension's manual splits this into four items that serve as a good template.

Source: clause 213 and the Department of Agricultural Extension manual on annual inspection and disposal (February 2022) · The "common slip" column comes from our team's asset-system implementations for government agencies

Item 4 is what separates this exercise from a stock count. The inspector must record the condition and the cause for every problem item, because that part of the report feeds the whole fact-finding and disposal chain that follows. A line that says only "damaged", without saying whether it wore out through normal use or something else happened, leaves the head of the agency unable to decide whether to order disposal directly or to appoint a committee first. The classification rules and register vocabulary are in fixed-asset terms you need to know, and the depreciation that must agree with the register value is covered in depreciation for government assets.

4. Who Receives the Report, What Is Attached, and Which Copy Must Reach the State Audit Office

When the inspection is done, the inspector submits a report to the appointing officer within 30 working days, and clause 213 requires one copy to be sent to the State Audit Office. Agencies under a department or ministry usually send a further copy to their parent body under internal circulars. The table summarizes the published manuals; form names vary by agency, but the structure is the same.

Source: clause 213 and the Department of Agricultural Extension manual (2022) · Form names are those of the example agency

5. Damaged, Deteriorated, Lost or No Longer Needed: Which Cases Need a Committee

Clause 214 provides that when the appointing officer receives the report and finds items that are damaged, deteriorated, lost, or no longer needed, a fact-finding committee is appointed, except where it is clearly evident that the deterioration came from normal use or the loss occurred naturally, in which case the head of the agency may order disposal directly. This is why the report in section 3 has to state the cause of each defect.

On price estimation, the manuals agree on one practice: the committee contacts two or three second-hand dealers for quotations that state the dealer's name and address, with a copy of an ID card or business registration attached, then reviews those quotations against market prices, the type, age and condition of the item, to propose a minimum price for auction. This step always takes longer than expected, especially for items with no purchase price in the register because they were donated or transferred in.

Items that are damaged or lost during the year do not wait for October. Clause 219 allows the agency to proceed under the law on liability of officials first, and then apply clauses 215 to 218 straight away.

6. Four Disposal Methods, the 500,000 and 1,000,000 Baht Lines, and the Second Notice to the State Audit Office

Clause 215 provides that items no longer needed, or costly to keep using, are reported to the head of the agency, who orders one of the methods below, and that the work is normally completed within 60 days from the day after the order.

Source: clauses 215, 216 and 217 · The Comptroller General's Department issued further guidance on auction disposal under clause 215 paragraph one (1) by letter no. 0405.4/w 187 dated 17 March 2026; agencies auctioning this round should read it alongside

Two clauses that follow disposal and are often missed. Clause 216: proceeds from disposal are handled under the budget procedure law or the agency's own financial law, not kept by the supplies unit. Clause 218: once an item is disposed of or written off, the officer removes it from the accounts or register immediately and notifies the State Audit Office within 30 days of removal, the second notice to the Audit Office in this cycle. Items that must be registered by law, such as vehicles, also require notice to the registrar within the time that law sets.

7. What the State Audit Office Actually Reported, and How to Prevent It This Round

The public example is the State Audit Office's review of the Office of the National Anti-Corruption Commission's spending in fiscal year 2023, which the NACC office addressed publicly on 29 March 2025. The Audit Office found deficiencies in asset inspection at 16 units: 8 had appointed the inspector after the deadline, and 8 had submitted the inspection report after the 30-working-day limit. It also found the asset control register incomplete, because equipment acquired before fiscal year 2019 had not been fully entered into the asset management system, leaving the financial statements incomplete. An independent constitutional body with a full internal audit function still missed these two basics. That is not a matter of intent; it is a matter of the tracking system.

8. For Agencies That Choose Their Own System: What Makes This a Report Rather Than a Project

Public organizations, state enterprises, autonomous universities and agencies with their own financial rules choose their own asset register system, yet they still submit the clause 213 report and the clause 218 notice like everyone else. What we see in implementation work is that an agency whose asset register and accounts are two separate databases spends October reconciling the two before the physical count can even begin. The criteria for judging a system are therefore few.

• The asset register and the accounts use one set of data. Purchase or acquisition price, acquisition date, accumulated depreciation and book value must come from a single record, because the 500,000 and 1,000,000 baht lines in clauses 215 and 217 are based on combined purchase or acquisition price.
• Every item has a location, a responsible person and a transfer history, so the inspector follows the list instead of searching for items.
• Per-item status that follows the regulation's cycle: in use, awaiting fact-finding, awaiting disposal, disposed, removed from the books, so that it is visible which items are stuck at which step.
• Counting by scanning from a phone, matched to the register at once, with the result recorded as found, not found or found in the wrong place, without re-keying.
• A record of who changed what and when (an audit log), because most of the State Audit Office's questions are "why did this figure change".

Saeree ERP's fixed-asset module is built around this cycle: registration with an asset code, automatic depreciation by category, counting by barcode or QR code from a phone with immediate matching to the register, alerts for assets due for disposal, an online register and an executive dashboard, an audit log, and a single database shared with accounting, supplies and budgeting. The government agencies using it and what the system supports are on Saeree ERP for government agencies; the digital asset register as a whole is covered in EP.4, and the broader checklist for going paperless in the paperless checklist for Thai government agencies.

What no system can do is make the decisions under clauses 214 and 215, which belong to the head of the agency and the committees. A system can only supply data that is correct and fast enough to decide within the deadlines, and keep evidence of when each decision was made and on which data.

Conclusion

• The annual inspection has five deadlines under clauses 213 to 218: appoint before the end of September, start on 1 October, report within 30 working days, normally dispose within 60 days, and notify the State Audit Office within 30 days of removal from the books. For FY2027 the report deadline falls around 13 November 2026 for agencies that started on 1 October.
• The inspector must not be the supplies officer who keeps the items, and four things are checked: the year's receipts and issues, materials on hand, equipment and buildings, and condition with cause.
• The report goes to the head of the agency, and one copy must go to the State Audit Office under the regulation, without waiting to be asked.
• For damaged or missing items, first separate normal wear that can go straight to disposal from cases that need a fact-finding committee. Losses with no one liable can be written off up to 1,000,000 baht by the head of the agency.
• Sales go to auction first, except where the combined purchase price is 500,000 baht or less, and the Comptroller General's Department issued new auction guidance by letter no. 0405.4/w 187 dated 17 March 2026.
• The latest public State Audit Office findings were late appointments, late reports and an incomplete register. All three are fixed by a calendar and a register that shares its data with the accounts.

The annual inspection is not a counting exercise. It is proof that the register, the accounts and the physical items are one and the same thing. When the three live in different places, October is spent reconciling before the inspection can begin.

- Sureeraya Limpaibul, Saeree ERP

References

• Ministry of Finance Regulation on Public Procurement and Supplies Administration B.E. 2560 (2017), Chapter 9 Supplies Administration, clauses 213–219 (Thai Government Procurement system, Comptroller General's Department)
• Manual on Annual Supplies Inspection and Disposal, Finance Division, Department of Agricultural Extension (February 2022)
• Disposal of Supplies by Public Auction, Cooperative Technology Transfer Center 3 knowledge document (August 2020), quoting clauses 215–219 of the regulation
• Comptroller General's Department guidance on disposal by public auction under clause 215 paragraph one (1), letter no. 0405.4/w 187 dated 17 March 2026 (published by the Ministry of Commerce Finance Division)
• Thai Post: NACC office responds to State Audit Office findings on its FY2023 spending, deficiencies at 16 units (29 March 2025)
• Annual Supplies Inspection Flow Chart (clauses 213–214), Internal Audit Group, Department of Health
• State Audit Office of the Kingdom of Thailand