There’s a recurring question that we get in the Asset Accounting area of SAP. If you’ve found your way to our site and to this blog, then you’re probably searching for a way to reverse depreciation. This question has been asked for such a long time that I’m not sure I can guess when it first came up. In fact I wrote a blog on this topic on SCN way back in 2008.
What does Reverse Mean?
The question that gets asked all the time is “How do I reverse depreciation?” but it’s important to first realize that there is not a single scenario at play. Most of the time when people are asking this question, they’re really looking for ways to make an adjustment of some kind. SAP is calculating some number for the annual depreciation amount and they want it to be different. This isn’t a reversal, it’s an adjustment. When I’m asked this question, I’m assuming that the customer wants to reverse the depreciation posting program run. For those of you that work on SAP, I’m referring to transaction code AFAB or AFABN, and program RAPOST2000 or RAPOST2010. Can this program be reversed? After all, we can reverse a project or order settlement, payment runs, and of course individual document postings. All of those are standard functionality too. So, can this be done?
The Answer
As I said in my earlier blog, way back in 2008…
"There is no standard solution offered by SAP to reverse a depreciation run. To even attempt a solution would require a significant series of adjustments to the associated FI-AA tables as well as the corresponding FI documents generated by the Depreciation Posting program. To create a solution for this that would still maintain proper consistency of the sub-ledger to support future depreciation runs and fixed asset reporting, as well as maintain the reconciliation between the General Ledger and the asset Sub-Ledger would be enormously difficult."
SAP does not ship a standard solution to reverse the impacts of the depreciation run. However, Serio Consulting has a custom solution to handle this specific situation. Our solution will do the following:
- Correctly reverse the FI documents. This is key because the documents that are generated by the asset subledger can’t be reversed in the GL using normal means.
- Reverse the posted depreciation at an asset level. This will be reflected on all reports including the Asset Explorer.
- All underlying statistical tables are updated correctly to ensure that the posting run was reversed completely and that future runs can be safely executed.
If you have a need for this service, please reach out to us as soon as possible. Keep in mind that if you are considering running the AR29N Revaluation process in SAP, it’s a requirement to reverse all prior posted depreciation to the date of the revaluation. It’s a de-facto requirement that this be done prior to revaluing the assets.
