How to Copy/Insert a New Depreciation Area Into Existing Assets With RAFABNEW (Part 2)

In the previous blog How to Copy/Insert a New Depreciation Area Into Existing Assets With RAFABNEW (Part 1) I covered the merits and situations where we often have to copy an existing depreciation area.  Of course, this is easily done on a go-forward basis.  Just do the configuration and the area will immediately be available to all newly created assets.  But the requirement is to have this area created for existing assets… hence the need for the RAFABNEW program.

Let’s start with the screenshot tour below.

What’s the Process?

For starters, the program is RAFABNEW but it’s accessed via transaction code [AFBN].  While this is not a routine process, SAP decided to put it on the end-user menu anyways.

Before we run the program let’s take a look at our sample asset.  The asset below was created prior to creating a new depreciation area.  The depreciation areas it has on it were the ones available at the time it was created.  Notice that it jumps from area 13 to area 30. 

Now I’ll go to the Asset Explorer to view the asset’s postings and values.  Notice the following:

1. The depreciation area panel (section 1) has no area 20
2. It has a posting made on 1/1/2020 for $10,000
3. It’s total APC value is the same $10,000

I’ve now gone and configured a new area (20) to track the non-bonus US federal tax values. If I go and create a new asset at [AS01], the area will show up as a valid depreciation area as shown below.  NOTE: the screen title and that the asset number hasn’t yet been assigned.

Again, the trick is to get this new area on the already existing and posted/valuated asset records.  It’s time to go to [AFBN].  I’ve populated my chart of depreciation and the new depreciation area number.  As the program title indicates, we are ‘opening’ a new depreciation area so it’s the new area that is specified.

QUICK SIDEBAR: If you are working in an ECC system with New Asset Accounting active, then the selection screen will look slightly different.  This version has a “Copy From” field whereas the older version derives this from configuration.  Otherwise, the coding limitations and core process is the same.

Here is the output of the report.  No matter if it’s run in test mode or update mode, the output is the same.  The report will list every company code assigned to the chart of depreciation entered on the selection screen.  In this demo system that I’m working in, I have a 1:1 assignment so there is only a single company code output.  But, don’t be shocked if you get a huge list of company codes for your main chart of depreciation. 

The number of assets that were evaluated is in the next column.  This is based on the configuration done earlier.

Now that the program has been run, I can go back to [AS03] to view the asset and see that the area 20 has been added.

If I go to the Asset Explorer, again the area shows up.  But I also see the same $10,000 transaction line item and valuation on the record.

From here, I can run an Asset Balance report.  The area 20 shows up (again)…

… and the asset values show up for that area.  Based on the output from [AFBN], there were two assets that had area 20 added and we can see those two in the list below. 

Obviously this was just an example based on a small set of data in a test system but we’ve run this for companies with hundreds of affected company codes containing millions of asset records.  Runtime can be an issue for datasets this large.  If you have any questions, let us know.