Weekly Review: Putting the Fix in Fixed Assets

Fixed sporting events are bad. Fixed transmissions are good. Fixed Assets are ...well... in between.

Today I want to look at some potential issues in the Fixed Asset module and what you can do about it. I'm using version 8 but these items should apply backwards and forward for several versions. There haven't been that many chages to FA. So here we go:

• The Fixed Asset module has it's own calendar in Tools-Setup-Fixed Assets-Quarter. You may think that this is no big deal, it's used for the mid-quater convention, yada yada. BUT if your Fixed Asset calendar is different from your financial calendar, you can have a mess! What can happen is that if you run depreciation only for the current period, because the financial and FA periods don't match, part of your depreciation may not flow to the GL! Oops. So if you're on a fiscal calendar, double check your FA calendar too. Go on. Do it now we'll wait.
  
• You think you have a problem with a Fixed Asset and the GL. Where do you look? The Inquiry-Fixed Asset-Financial Detail windows is your best friend. The batch number in this window shows the GL interface batch. If you have gaps, the data didn't go to the GL. (Of course, since you do account account recons you found and fixed this via a JE at month end. Didn't you?)
  
• Partial Retirments Just so you understand what a partial retirement transactions does, here's the scoop. Let's say I have asset 100-1 and it contains Ferraris with a quantity of 5 (it was a special bulk price). When you total one of my Ferraris, I have to partially retire the asset since it has a quantity greater than one and you only totalled one of my Ferraris. When the partial retirement is done, GP creates a second asset behind the scenes to hold the retired portion. In this case asset 100-2 would be created and it would contain 1 retired Ferrari. Asset 100-1 has it's quantity and cost reduced by the amount of the retired portion and it remains the active asset. When you look in the Retirements window, you see asset 100-1 with the partially retired flag set, but all you see is the active portion when you drill down on the asset id. To find out info about the retired portion, you have to go find the correct suffix for that asset and drill down on it via the regular FA inquiry window. More importantly, you totalled one of my Ferraris!
  
  
  

Originally Posted by Mark 4/26/2006 12:31:00 PM