Intangible asset
Financial Accounting glossary · Assets: Cash, Receivables, Inventory, PP&E & Intangibles
Definition
Identifiable non-monetary asset without physical substance.
Intangible asset in plain English
An intangible asset is something valuable a company owns that you can't physically touch — no bricks, no machines, just rights or ideas. Think patents, trademarks, brand names, or software: they clearly have worth and can be identified and separated (that's the 'identifiable' part), and they're not just cash or money owed to you (that's 'non-monetary'). The everyday version: a famous recipe or a popular username can be worth a fortune even though you can't hold it in your hand. Companies list these as assets because they help generate future money, even without physical form.
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