Budgetary Projections

Question

New to SAGE FAS but very familar with SAP and Oracle. I would like to create an export file (excel or XML) that contains the list of our assets with their future period depreciation projections by each individual asset. The standard report only shows the detail by month for a group of assets. How do I get the depreciation forecast for future periods by individual asset? Thank you for any guidance!!!

Bob Mc · Accepted Answer

Matt, because you wrote that you are new to the Sage Fixed Assets—Depreciation program, you may not be aware of the built-in projection reports. There are two – Monthly and Annual. 
 However, because you are looking for the projected depreciation on each asset, here is one way you can do it, and this assumes you are using the latest version, i.e., 2014.1. 
 First, set a period close on all of the assets in the group on which you intend to perform the projection. Do this in order to lock in and protect the depreciation figures to the Current Through Date for all of your books. You might do this on all assets in your company or if only interested in a smaller list, set the period close only on a specific group that you’ve created. 
 Next, depreciate the group of assets to the date that defines the beginning of the run period. E.g., if you need the projected depreciation expense for the year 2016, you would calculate depreciation to December 31, 2015 because this date defines the beginning of that year. Don't bother to send this report to the window. 
 Depreciate the assets again, but this time to the end of the run period. Continuing with the example to use the year 2016, you would calculate depreciation to December 31, 2016 because that date defines the end of the run period in this illustration. Send the report to the window. 
 Once the Depreciation Expense Report is open, you can use the Export icon (on the far left of the toolbar at the top) to save any of the reports for any of the books that are important to capture. When the dialog box opens to save the file, you can choose the type of file format from the drop-down menu. Three are 3 Excel choices. Two are indicated “data-only” into the xls or xlsx file. The other is simply xls. 
 The 2 data-only options will provide the report in a record-based format that preserves the singular integrity of the value to a column. The 3rd option will provide the report in a page-based format into the older version of Excel. For the most part, this report will look pretty, though not perfectly, as it will bring in the headers and formatting of the report. But you will also lose the singular column data integrity that is characteristic of the record-based format. In other words, some of the values may be displayed in merged cells. 
 After you’ve captured your data for the future period, you will want to return the books to what they were before you executed your depreciation to a future period. Ensure that you are in the group of assets that you depreciated, and select all. Use the Reset Depreciation tool to reset the depreciation to the Period Close Date. 
 I have listed for you the major steps involved although there are some ancillary steps I have not mentioned. I realize that this process I have outlined might appear daunting to someone who is new to the software. You might consider enrolling in an Intermediate Depreciation class offered through Sage University.

Bob Mc · Answer

It is still the same process I outlined. 
 Here is the difference. With the version that you are using, i.e., 2013.1, the dialog box is different when exporting the report into a file. Instead of a window to save the file, you will instead see an export window with 2 options – Format and Destination. 
 In the drop-down menu from the Format option, you select the type of file. Here, you will only see 2 Excel choices instead of the 3 that I listed before. Both of the options are into an xls file (the xlsx for versions after MS Excel 2003 is not available). One is page-based and the other is record-based as I described in my earlier post. I infer from what you wrote that you will choose the data-only option. 
 For the Destination option, there are a number of options. Typically, you might choose to save the file to your computer or what I often did when using the old version, was to choose application. In this way, I could tinker with the file before I actually saved it. 
 Another window will appear called Excel Format Options. Click on the options in the lower right-hand corner, the one with the multiple redirect arrows. This will expand your window to the bottom giving you more choices. You may want to experiment a little with these, but here is what I recommend: 
 Keep the default check on Export page header and page footer. 
 Remove the default check on Simplify page headers. 
 Add a check to the following: 
 •	Export object formatting 
 •	Maintain relative object position 
 •	Maintain column alignment 
 In my previous post, I explained how you could pull the depreciation for 2016, and you could do this iteratively for the other years that you want as well. 
 After you’ve completed your budgetary task, remember to reset depreciation back to the figures that you protected with the Period Close as I explained earlier. 
 I need to close with one last note, Matt. After reading my posted suggestion to you, one of the experts at our company HQ, and one whom I regard highly, sent me a private email recommending that you ought to consider using Books 6 and 7. And that’s an excellent idea, and another way of approaching your objective. If you are not currently using those 2 custom books, you could use the Copy Book feature (found on the Asset pull-down menu) to copy your Internal Book (assuming this is the book you are interested in projecting) into the other 2 books. Then essentially, you have those 2 books available to execute your budgetary projections by depreciating only those into the future periods.

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