Dynamics GP Fixed Assets Daily Transaction and Routines Highlights

For complete and the most accurate information, please review FA user manual, which could be printed as PDF document – it is in user workstation Documentation folder.  In this small paper we are rather giving you highlights on what to expect, based on our ten years of consulting practice. Let’s begin with asset creation:

1. There are three ways to create the asset.  First would be directly from scratch in Asset General Information windows.  However, you can create asset through PM Invoice, where you change PURCH distribution type to so-called FA trigger account.  This account should be defined in Purchasing Posting Account setup form.  Here is something confuse – when you click save, form clears all the fields.  This is OK, you can assign here multiple trigger account, the hint is – the account should be saved through this form to become legitimate.  The third way – you can get it created in Purchase Order Processing Purchase Order or Receipt, the same idea, change PURCH distribution to one of the trigger accounts.  In POP module you can also use more elegant way of marking PO or Receipt line as Capital Item, where you may select only some of the lines to be capitalized.  Please, note that if you mark line as Capital in PO, it will be market in the Receipt, when it is matched against PO and even more, if you use separate Invoice matching (when Receipt doc arrives with the merchandise and invoice comes in mail a week later), if Invoice has  different cost, the capitalized item cost will be updated to reflect your negotiation regarding the cost, specified in Invoice

2. How to process with the asset creation, posted via POP or AP?  Well, if you have at least one line in FA purchasing table, meaning that you did change PURCH if triggered by account or market POP or Purchase Receipt line as Capital Item, on the Asset General Info form you will see Purchase button to the right from Asset ID and Suffix (this button is not shown when the table is empty)

3. Projection versus Depreciation.  It is common scenario, where you want to use budget including depreciation and amortization.  This is where you use projections.  It is nice, that projections are stored in their own tables per user, meaning that your colleague could do her or his own projections without intervening into your routines.  Projection doesn’t post to General Ledger and into Depreciation tables, however you can print out projection reports later one.  Normally you do depreciation every month and by Asset Group.  You can have as many Books to depreciate or make projection as needed, however only one could be interface to your GL

4. Transfers and Retirements.  These processes are reasonably straight forward, however we would like to talk about partial transfer or retirement.  Partial transfer is only possible for single Asset, where you can do partiality based on fractional quantity, percentage or the cost.  Basing fraction by cost is the most subtle, here you cannot exceed cost of the asset the cost on any of the associated books

5. Changing Depreciation Sensitive Asset information.  If down the road you decide to re-depreciate your items, it is possible.  You can change such fields, as Cost Basis, Depreciation method, Original Life, Salvage Value, Switch Over, Averaging Convention, Depreciated to Date, etc.  If you decide to do so, in most of the cases you will get decision making dialog: Reset Life, Reset Year, or Recalculate.  Please, be aware that Great Plains GL transaction, corresponding to the reset or recalculate will not be posted to the historical years, instead it will be posted to the account ‘Prior Year Depreciation’

6. Mass Change.  Here you can change such fields as Class, Location (for Tax Reporting purposes in general), Structure ID, Physical Location, Master Asset ID (to regroup asset kit around new master Asset ID), GL Posting Accounts, Book (attention – all the fields are prior depreciation sensitive!), and user defined fields (there are up to fifteen fields possible to define).  Please, note, that Mass Change is based on the current system date, if you would like to provide traceability (audit trail) to the change, consider instead Asset Transfer or Mass Transfer, where each transfer has its own Transfer Event and the transaction is logged in Transfer master table.  If you would like mass update fields, not available via mass update, consider to deploy Integration tool for FA, where you can use update only option

7. Your FA version and upgrade considerations.  Additional functionality developing for FA was not really too extensive recent years.  There was some change with the introduction of such tax incentives as TEFRA, Sec. 179, ITC, but you may remember these as something available in the past.  Since version 8.0 we believe the module was in stable maintenance mode.  If you are on Dynamics GP 2010/11.0, 10.0, 9.0, or 8.0 – FA module is not something where you are screaming about version upgrade (however upgrade might be required by other Corporate ERP features obsolescence)

8. Fixed Assets and International Compliance.  This paper was written based on the USA tax requirements compliance (especially in the section about additional allowances, accelerated depreciation).  GP is localized for the majority of English speaking countries, plus for Spanish speaking South, Central America and Caribbean basin.  Please check with you regional Microsoft Business Solutions office

9. Support domestically in the USA, Canada, Mexico and internationally.  This option is possible via Web Sessions, Skype or Phone conferences and direct visits onsite (in the case of the large scale project).  Our consulting team speaks English, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Filipino.  Feel free to call us 1-866-304-3265, 1-269-605-4904, or email help@efaru.com