With year-end looming and bonuses looking as believable as Father Christmas - unless you're a banker or broker, of course - FD decided the fixed asset register (FAR) needed a thorough review to see if Blaminio's slightly shabby balance sheet could be spruced up.

Now, as I've explained before, FD thinks CPD is a TV cop series, but somehow he managed to find out from his institute that fair value is replacing historical cost accounting as the next big thing. He's embraced this revolution and decided that our neatly named Fixed Asset Review Team - well, me and him - should be asked to perform a thorough search to ensure that every asset owned by the company has been suitably captured and coded, and then its "potential revaluation status" should be assessed.

So the 20lb Christmas turkey of a spreadsheet containing the FAR was handed over to me. Of course, the FAR is never a solo effort. Unlike your Johnny-come-lately budgeting spreadsheets, this one is handed down from one generation of jockeys to the next. We're talking about a file that was created in Lotus 1-2-3 when "intangible" was still a variety of orange. Everything on the register has to be treated with respect, you can't just randomly change categories or values.

So you can imagine my dismay when the head of the property department got on the blower and started shouting the odds. Why? Well, a draft update of the FAR had been circulated, giving people the chance to review the renewed values. That had been FD's idea, although I did point out that when it comes to non-financial folk, fait accompli is usually the best policy.

Within the terms of reference of the projects, my job was to check for technical accuracy, completeness and valuation. I had not been tasked with sense-checking the brought-forwards. So when a bloke from property tells me the spreadsheet was "obviously wrong", my first reaction was to retort, "Am I bovvered?"

Then he "escalated his agenda". Like every other property manager, this guy is basically a failed estate agent and has a massive chip on his shoulder. When he'd seen something he didn't like about his own asset assumptions - and, it being property, he was never likely to accept our assets and their "amateur" opinions on the subject - he'd been through not only his tab on the spreadsheets, but every other one as well.

He'd discovered one or two "anomalies". For instance, a 1980s built extension to a turn-of-the-century property located in Surrey was down in the FAR as being in Scotland. Also, every high-powered commercial coffee machine we owned appeared to be located in a field in Shropshire. Not exactly known for their espresso addiction, those Shroppy lads.

Property manager went on and on. My usual riposte to non-financial managers poking around in our business - "none of the exceptions are material" and "I think you'll find that it's an internal audit matter" - failed to placate. Eventually, he demanded to speak to FD. Judging by the length of the call, he was querying every satellite navigation system in the spreadsheet that didn't have a corresponding company car - a neat scam by the fleet manager, it turns out.

Despite his innate fecklessness, FD did the decent thing and closed ranks against the outsider. While he was forced to concede there were one or two inaccuracies, he declared the FAR was fit for purpose. The 25 per cent uplift in asset values I'd managed to "identify" - amazing how much more robust modern computers are - probably helped convince him it was fine, as did the proximity to the year-end.

But we did want to make sure we could avoid any unnecessary poking around next time. So we established a materiality level and rediscovered everything over that value that had been, er, clearly misplaced by spreadsheet jockeys of old. Re-keying errors. Yeah. We then created an adjustment schedule that got the items out of fields in Shropshire and Scotland.

Finally, we looked hard at Blaminio's land and buildings. Sadly, prudence led us to believe that the property portfolio, while increasing in value, had to be treated with some caution. So, while it helped boost the overall balance sheet ready for year-end, the increase in value stopped just short of hitting the threshold for the payout on the property department's bonus. What a shame.

BARRY CELLS is number three in Blaminio's finance department. He was talking to Peter Charles, who does not necessarily agree with his views on property managers, the people of Shropshire or non-belief in Father Christmas.