Change in S/4HANA Fixed Asset Reporting and Deactivated Assets

For as long as I can remember, the Asset Balance report… which is the main ‘go to’ and most basic asset report that everyone uses… has specifically excluded deactivated assets.  This wasn’t a limitation, it was a design decision SAP made when they wrote the report.  Their logic was that if an asset had been retired (deactivated), then it shouldn’t be reportable.  If the asset wasn’t on the balance sheet, then why should it show up on an asset report?

For the Asset Balance report (transaction code AR01), this was tweaked so that it would evaluate when the asset was retired as compared with the Report Date that was used on the report. 

Example

Here’s an example from an ECC 6.0 system.  I have a few assets that have been created, capitalized and are now shoing up in the Asset Balances report.

Now, I’m going to retire asset 10008 in the list as of 10/31/2024.

As expected, the asset’s Deactivation Date field was populated (lower right hand corner).  The asset is no longer active.

As expected, when I re-run the report the asset 10008 no longer appears.

What Happened?

What I’ve described above iis the way it has always been with the Asset Balance report (and other fixed asset reports).  The reason for this is because of how the Report Date on the selection screen functions and how it treats retired assets.  The report will only show capitalized assets that are active as of the specified report date.  I could, for instance, go back and specify a report date that is prior to the retirement posting, and the asset will show (back) up in the report.  This is good because it lets you report on your asset register at different points in time. 

But the minute I choose a report date that is after the asset’s retirement date (i.e., the default year-end value of 12/31/2024 in this system), then it won’t show up.  If I were to just include this one asset in the selection, I’ll get this ‘No data was selected’ messages which confirms that I have no active capitalized assets on the report date of 12/31/2024.

What’s Changed?

Now in S/4HANA the report behaviour has changed.  The report will continue to output/show the asset record but with zero value.  You won’t get a ‘No data was selected’ message as it relates to deactivated assets.

Now I’m in an S/4HANA 2024 OP system.  I have the two assets shown below.

I’ve now retired the first asset 200000031 and it has a deactivation date of 4/16/2024. 

We know how that would turn out if this was an ECC system, but now in S/4HANA, AR01 will show us the following:

The asset 200000031 is still output but with a zero value.  The standard report will output the asset regardless of the Report Data (12/31/2024 in this case) and the asset’s Deactivation Date.

Is There a Way to Get the Old Report Behaviour?

Sort of.  SAP was good enough to add in the [Deactivation On] field to the report field catalog so you can pull it up…

… and then include it in the report’s line layout display.  From there, you can filter out the Deactivation On field to only show you the active asset records.