Dynamics GP Fixed Assets: How to Backdate Depreciation and Other Advises

Please, note, however, that it is difficult to expect that generic Great Plains consultant to do primarily FA implementation, and as we see – some of the features are not known to even certified consulting pool.  We would like to share with you some capabilities, where we had to recover failed implementation for one of the customers.  Let’s take a look at some of them:

1. Backdating depreciation.  In some cases you can do mistakes and depreciate the asset that was already sold or retired, as whoever did retirement – this person didn’t inform you.  This is OK, open Tools -> Routines -> Fixed Assets -> Depreciate One Asset.  Enter the target date as prior to depreciated to date (check it on Asset – Book form).  Click depreciate – you will get prompt message that the target date you have entered is before the depreciation to date for this asset, should you continue?  Select Yes.  What is going to happen is the following – this process will note delete over date depreciation neither from General Ledger, not from Financial Detail FA table.  Instead it will send reversing transaction into Financial Detail table and next time you interface the Fixed Assets module to GL – reversing entry will be moved to GL and available there for reviewing and posting.  And this is how it should be done.  We were observing the situation, where one of the GP SQL programmers tried to back date depreciation directly in the SQL tables, and this was an unhappy case study.  Please, note also that backdating is not possible via Mass Depreciation form, you should do it for each individual asset

2. Partial Transfer or Retirement.  Similar to depreciation or amortization backdating, you can only do partial transaction for the individual asset.  The percent for Partial transfer or retirement could be based on the quantity, cost or percent.  There is no need to calculate exact combination of quantity and percentage, for example, as system will correct the percentage, based on quantity entered.  Cost will have precedence over percentage

3. File Maintenance.  Yes, it is available in the module.  When you do data repair, some portion of work could be given to Reconcile.  Here you can update any blank account on the asset account record directly from FA Company Setup account (we would probably like to see the option to update it from Asset Class, but take whatever good thing you have).  If you do barcode scanning in asset inventory, you can reset barcode labels directly from ID and suffix.  You can even print invalid custodians report (maybe somebody is no longer in the company and not listed as active employee in US Payroll module)

4. Book Compare Inquiry.  This is one of our favorites.  Here you can have up to three books, associated with the Asset and you can jump to Book Asset inquiry as well as to Financial Detail table

5. Import Tool.  Yes, there is the one, you do not do it via Integration Manager.  Tools -> Utilities -> Fixed Assets -> Asset Import Export.   Typically you import Asset master records: Book, Class and then you optionally run macro to update some of the fields.  Depreciation is then run from the date placed in service up to the current date to compare results with the old accounting

6. SQL Surgery.  In some cases you may decide to do something in SQL update statement.  We found it useful to update GL posted transactions to include additional reference on the source in the FA module

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