Personal Property Management and Accountability
for Headquarters Management

Personal property management includes all functions necessary for the proper determination of need, source, acquisition, receipt, accountability, utilization, maintenance, rehabilitation, storage, distribution and disposal of property.

See the section on the bottom of this page for the Authorized Property Pass Signers List and the Accountable Property Representatives by Organization List.

Personal Property Guidance

Personal property management requires a lifecycle approach to be effective. There are four major phases in the personal property lifecycle: acquisition, receipt, utilization, and disposal. Each phase has distinct processes and procedures associated with it to maintain proper stewardship of the Department’s assets. If the processes and procedures in one phase are not followed, it makes it difficult to establish and maintain accountability in the subsequent phase. The acquisition phase encompasses the identification of the need to acquire an asset and includes the process of completing the documentation to acquire the asset. Assets can be acquired in many ways. For instance, items are acquired from external organizations (e.g. transfers from other agencies), procurements (e.g. purchase orders or purchase cards), donations, loans, or transfers. Items can also be acquired internally within the Department through reutilization.

The receipt phase includes the delivery and acceptance of personal property assets into the DOE HQ inventory. Receiving can be either centralized or decentralized. At DOE Headquarters delivery and acceptance of personal property is centralized, meaning that property is delivered directly to the Landover warehouse or building loading docks at Forrestal and Germantown Decentralized receiving occurs when an item is delivered directly to the end user, thus bypassing controls in place to formally inspect the shipment and record the asset for input into Sunflower. While there are special considerations for each type of receiving process, the decentralized approach is discouraged at DOE Headquarters.

The majority of an asset’s life is spent in the utilization phase. The utilization phase begins when the item is placed in service, or deployed, for use by the intended recipient. During this phase, the asset could be transferred, loaned, repaired, physically inventoried, or used. Each of the areas requires specific procedures to properly process and record the current state of the asset.

The final phase is disposition. A physical disposition occurs when the item is no longer needed by DOE and is available to be transferred to another agency, donated, sold, recycled, or destroyed. When an item is lost, damaged, or destroyed, the item can also be retired from the financial statements, relinquishing the DOE of responsibility for tracking the item.

Accountability

Personal property accountability includes responsibilities for such tasks as:

  • Presenting personal property for identification and tagging;
  • Ensuring the assets are on the property record and properly assigned;
  • Securing and maintaining records relating to the assets;
  • Tracking the movement of assets;
  • Recording changes in physical condition;
  • Conducting physical inventories;
  • Verifying counts;
  • Reconciling the results for a positive outcome;
  • Reporting all loss, theft, and damage of assets;
  • Reutilizing assets when possible; and
  • Properly disposing of the assets.  

MAAdm Updated 01/25/24