Fixed Assets overview
What the Fixed Assets module does, who uses it, how an asset moves from draft to disposed, and how it connects to Finance.
What Fixed Assets is for
Fixed Assets keeps the register of the things the company owns and uses for more than a year: laptops, vehicles, machinery, furniture. For each asset it records the cost, plans the monthly depreciation, posts it to the ledger and keeps the book value up to date until the asset is sold or scrapped. It installs with Finance and posts to the Finance ledger.
Who uses it
- Accountants (permission asset.manage) create assets and categories, propose depreciation runs and propose changes.
- Financial controllers (permission asset.approve) capitalise assets, activate categories, approve runs and approve changes.
- Auditors and managers (permission asset.view) read the register and the reports.
Key ideas
- Asset category. A template for a group of assets: depreciation method, life in months, residual percentage and the seven ledger accounts that depreciation and disposal post to. A category must be activated by someone other than whoever prepared it before it can be used.
- Asset states. An asset starts as Draft, becomes Running when it is capitalised and ends Disposed.
- Capitalise. Moving a draft asset to Running. This posts the acquisition and plans the depreciation schedule.
- Depreciation book. The financial book posts to the ledger. Tax and management books carry their own depreciation for reporting and post nothing.
- Depreciation run. One proposed batch of monthly depreciation for every running asset, approved and posted in one step.
- Change. A transfer, impairment, estimate change or disposal. It takes effect only when somebody else approves it.
- Book value. Cost less depreciation taken less impairment.
- Four-eyes control. Whoever prepares a capitalisation, a category, a run or a change cannot approve it. This applies to administrators too.
How it connects to Finance
| Event | What it creates in Finance |
|---|---|
| Capitalise a typed acquisition | Debit asset cost, credit the account the asset was paid from or owed to |
| Capitalise from a supplier bill line | Moves the amount from the account the bill charged onto asset cost |
| Opening balance asset | Nothing: it is already in the opening trial balance |
| Depreciation run | Debit depreciation expense, credit accumulated depreciation, one entry per asset per month |
| Impairment | Debit impairment expense, credit accumulated impairment |
| Disposal | Clears cost, depreciation and impairment, books proceeds and the gain or loss |
Postings follow the Finance rules: they are refused in a locked period. See Close a month and a year.
Not available yet
Revaluation, reversal of an impairment, leases (right-of-use), split and merge of assets, transfer between companies and assets held for sale are not built.
Start with Getting started with Fixed Assets.