Hello TCJA,

The new Methods are:

• RM – Remaining value over Remaining Life, midmonth
• RH – Remaining value over Remaining Life, half-year (or mid-quarter)

Please See New depreciation methods for more details.

~Delray

Hello TCJA,

It was very nice of Sage to add these two methods to accomodate electing real property businesses and to add the bulk edit feature for depreciation methods, HOWEVER!!!!!  Both of these methods zero out any bonus previously taken which is clearly WRONG!  They have a "work around" where you have to export each book of the assets (six in our case) change the beginning balance to include the bonus, change the depreciation methods, combine all six files into one import file, delete the old assets, and import the new ones.  They did offer to do this for us - I'm sure that involves a nice fee.  Not impressed with Sage's solutions.  Shopping for a new fixed asset system, and struggling to get through the 2018 returns.  Sage is only making a very difficult tax year even worse!

Kim,

The "work around" that you described is like taking a slow boat to China.  It will get you there but not without a significant investment of time.

Here’s what I would suggest instead.  Planning steps.  Customize the asset list view to include the 168 Allowance Amount.  Create your group of assets where the method must be changed to ADS.  When viewing this group of assets, send this asset list  to a file (you might use either the Print Asset List or Export to Excel feature at the bottom of the screen).

Execution steps.  Use the Bulk Edit feature to change the depreciation method to the methods Delray identified above, i.e., RM for the real property and RH for the rest.  The validation report will list all assets that have already been depreciated with bonus.  They will be identified with a warning.  The very same assets will again be listed in auto-generated report when you execute the bulk edit.  Be sure to capture at least one of these reports, if not both, by saving them to a file.

Using the file you saved from your planning steps, go to the detail view of each asset listed with a 168 allowance amount (these should be the same assets identified with a warning in your Bulk Edit validation report) and add that figure (168 Allowance Amount) to the amount in the Beginning Accum field. This will indeed take time to edit the Beginning Accum field on each of these assets.  But that might take less time to complete than the “work around” you were previously given.

If your list to be manually edited includes hundreds or more, you may want to engage a PS consultant to do the work for you.

Kim, have you recommended yet an improvement to the software on the Sage City website – suggesting that the RV methods, RM and RH, should add the bonus, if it was taken, to the accumulated depreciation and enter that sum into the beginning fields?  Because like you, I think that’s an operation that could be done in the software.  But I have found from experience that Sage management is more likely to listen to recommendations from customers like you than they will accept the same idea from me.  Improvements to the software are driven by customer recommendations!

Hi Kim,

Here's an idea to supplement Bob's suggestion. If you have an available general information field, use the field to record the existing bonus amount, so you have a record of the amount with the asset for future reference. (I see you have six books with bonus, are they all different amounts? If so, you may want to use multiple fields.)

This can be done in mass for all your assets that have bonus and need to change to one of the new methods. Before performing the Bulk Edit, export the Section 168 Allowance amount(s) and the System ID for the assets to a CSV file, using File / Company Utilities / Custom Export. Then perform a Custom Import from the CSV file. Select "Update Asset" on step 4 of the import, and map the exported bonus amount to the chosen general information field. 

Thank you Ann for your suggestion.

Hi TCJA,

Thank you for the question. After hearing from you and other customers with similar questions, a how-to document has been created. A new Sage City article has been added with a PDF attachment of the steps needed to convert any existing real property to the ADS method. You can find the article and attachment here.