In a call with one of our valued clients, we discussed how to manage special depreciation on assets. This most often happens when the fed govt decides to give business a special break on a certain kind of asset and often exists only for one year. As a result of this call, I decided to create the following.
The only way I’ve found to manage these special little jewels of gov’t largesse is to use the Special Depreciation Allowance field on the Asset Book Record.
Figure 1- Asset Book Record
If you set this field to Yes and the appropriate allowance %, the system will then prompt you when you save the record:
Figure 2 – Change in Depreciation
Click Yes if you meant to make this change.
The system will then show the following dialog box:
Figure 3 – Reset Options
These three reset options will allow you to choose if you will recalculate deprecation for the entire life or for the last year of the asset. Choosing either Life or Year will result in reversing entries being done for the originally calculated depreciation and new entries being done for the newly calculated amount. If you just want to use the new depreciation rate going forward, just click Recalculate. This re-calculates the periodic depreciation rate for the asset and uses that the next time you run depreciation.
You’ll have to do the above for each asset that has a special depreciation allowance. However, there is a quick way to do this.
Go to Tools – Setup – Fixed Assets. Choose Mass Change.
Figure 4 – Mass Change Window
Enter “TEST” in the Asset Group ID window (you can use any name you wish, I just used “TEST”). When the system prompts you that the asset group doesn’t exist, click Yes to create it. This then takes you to the Asset Group window.
Figure 5 – Asset Group Window
Click New Group. The system will prompt you to create the new group TEST. Click Ok. Then click Test in the Current Group box. This will activate the “… Group” buttons in the middle top of the window and display a list of all assets in the system. Click Search.
Figure 6 – Asset Group Search Window
In the Asset Group Search Window, click the Field Selection drop down. This will allow you to select Asset Class or any other field on which you care to search. I set mine equal to “AUTO”. Click Search.
Figure 7 – Filtered Asset Group
The group now includes only the assets that are in the Auto class. Click Ok to return to the Mass Change Window.
Figure 8 – Mass Change Window with Selections
Click to book tab. Select the Book ID you wish to update. Click the Special Depreciation Allowance and choose the recalculation option (Life, Year, or Remaining). Click Apply Changes. Now all assets in the Group have the new depreciation allowance.
Some other thoughts:
1. The special allowance adds to the periodic depreciation by taking the % included in the allowance against the cost of the asset.
2. If you are trying to apply the allowance to the entire year, and you know about the allowance before you run depreciation for the first period in the year, then choose Recalculate\Recalc Remaining. This will apply the allowance to each months depreciation for the year.
3. If you are trying to apply the allowance to the entire year, but you don’t know about the allowance until the year is partially complete (ie, you’ve already run depreciation for some part of the year), chose Reset Year so that you take the full year amount.
4. If the Allowance is only valid for a year, you have to do the above and remove the allowance from the Asset Group when you’ve run the last depreciation for the year.
Many thanks to the amazing Mark Polino for helping me with this.
Dwight
One of the biggest problems with Fixed Assets in Dynamics GP is a lack of historical reporting. While detail reporting on every FA related GL line is available, it’s only available one asset at a time. Now my colleague at I.B.I.S., David Duncan, has created an analysis cube tied to the Fixed Asset module in Dynamics GP. We’ve deployed it at a select number of test customers for fine tuning and now it’s ready to be released into the world.
