More than four years after its launch, the Personal Property Securities Register remains a mystery to most businesses. Only a small minority of companies use it and the error rate in making registrations is high.EDX founder Kim Powell said only about 15 per cent of Australian businesses use the PPSR to register their security interests. Of those companies using the PPSR about 80 per cent make mistakes in the registration process that would limit or invalidate their security.EDX is a specialist provider of advice on the Personal Property Securities Act and the PPSR. It was bought by Veda in February.Speaking at a Veda PPSR conference in Sydney yesterday, Powell said: "The PPSA has hardly been adopted at all. We have a long way to go."The PPSA, which came into effect in January 2012, replaced state and territory laws with a national regime for the creation, registration and enforcement of security interests in personal property.The Act also created the PPSR, which consolidated more than 40 commonwealth, state and territory registers used to provide notification to third parties of interest in personal property.The PPSA regime has had many critics and the consensus is that it is too complex. A review of the legislation delivered to the Government last year made a large number of recommendations to simplify the system but so far they have not been acted on.Powell said there were several common mistakes that businesses made when they were registering their security interests. They use the wrong identifier for the counterparty (such as using an ABN rather than an ACN).They use the wrong "collateral class" when they are identifying property. They use the wrong serial number. They get the timing of their registrations wrong."If your business activity is caught in the scope of the PPSA and you have not registered you are going to lose your security," Powell said.