The GL account assignment in fixed assets is far more complex than what is required in the other two subledgers; AP and AR. There are 42 different GL accounts that can be assigned to each asset to. Yes, 42. Why so many? Well, as compared to a vendor/customer, an asset tracks more value types such as ordinary, special, and unplanned depreciation. There is also a wider variety of journal entries that get constructed for asset transactions. For example, an asset retirement can trigger a gain or loss on the posting in addition to zeroing out the asset’s cost and reserve basis. Related to this, each set of GL accounts can be different based on which depreciation area / ledger is posted to. There are also advanced ways where we can generate additional line items as part of the standard asset posting process to account for requirements to post asset values by other account assignment objects. All in all, it’s far more complex then anything else I’ve seen in FICO.
For those new to fixed assets, here is what one of the configuration screens for account determination looks like.
As you can see in the image above, there are multiple accounts to maintain and it’s all done at a combination of the Chart of Depreciation, Chart of Accounts, Account Determination, and Depreciation Area. While this detail is necessary, it can be cumbersome to maintain GLs for multiple areas or account determinations at the same time… and this is often required.
In response to this issue, SAP just released a new support note note 2457480. The note provides a new maintenance view which can be accessed at SM30. Now we can maintain the accounts in a more tabular fashion which has a lot of advantages, most notably the ability to copy/paste values between different areas or account determinations.
This is a nice step but it’s not incorporated into the standard configuration. You have to know it exists in order to use it. Secondly, the accounts that are included in the view are very limited. I suppose I could edit the view with the rest of the GLs but I don’t know why they’re not all listed. As it is, I might continue to just maintain the tables directly and generate a manual transport.
