Tangible assets refer to assets in physical form, including fixed assets and current assets. Such as inventory, foreign investment, monetary assets, accounts receivable, etc. Tangible assets can be divided into narrow sense and broad sense. Generally speaking, tangible assets are assets with a certain physical form. Assets in the form of concrete material products include productive tangible assets and unproductive tangible assets.

Intangible assets refer to identifiable non-monetary assets that have no physical form and are owned or controlled by enterprises. Intangible assets can be divided into broad sense and narrow sense. Intangible assets in a broad sense include monetary funds, accounts receivable, financial assets, long-term equity investment, patent rights, trademark rights and so on. Because they have no material entity, they show some legal rights or technologies. But intangible assets are usually understood in a narrow sense in accounting, that is, patent rights and trademark rights are called intangible assets.

Both tangible assets and intangible assets belong to assets, that is, resources formed by past transactions or events of an enterprise, which are owned or controlled by the enterprise and are expected to bring economic benefits to the enterprise. All kinds of articles with commercial or exchange value owned by any business unit, enterprise or individual.

Assets have the following characteristics:

1. Assets are expected to bring economic benefits to enterprises.

2. Assets should be resources owned or controlled by enterprises.

3. Assets are formed by past transactions or events of the enterprise.

4, assets must be able to use money to measure.