Customizing Asset Management

You can customize Asset Management as follows:

Managing the Approval Process

Changing Depreciation Calculation Dates

Adding Depreciation Types

Changing an Asset's Depreciation Date and Recalculating

Managing the Approval Process

By default, assets are approved using the Asset Management process app.

You can use these methods to modify the approval process as needed:

Regardless of the process app you use for asset approvals, you can enforce the process by setting the Requires Business Approval and Requires Financial Approval fields as required and as read only. This forces new assets through the approval process.

These tasks can be performed in for the entire process app Asset Management or Service Requests in SBM Composer or in SBM Application Administrator for specific projects.

Changing Depreciation Calculation Dates

By default, depreciation is automatically calculated on the first day of every month based on the calculation set for the Next Depreciation Date field and the "AM - Start Depreciation when Date is Reached" notification. The Notification Server must be running before depreciation calculations can occur.

You can change the frequency of depreciation calculations and the date on which calculations occur.

To change depreciation calculation dates:

  1. In SBM Composer, open the Asset Management process app.
  2. Edit the "Received" transition.
  3. Modify the calculation for the Next Depreciation Date field. By default, the Operand 1 value is set to "Start of next month." Select a different value that occurs in the future.
    Tip: For best performance, calculate depreciation monthly rather than weekly or daily.
  4. Repeat these steps for the "In Past" and "Empty" transitions.
  5. Deploy your changes.

Customizing Asset Classes

By default, Asset Management tracks assets of the following classes:
  • Computer
  • Furniture
  • Hardware
  • Leasehold Improvements (new carpet, for example)
  • Office Equipment
  • Other Fixed Assets
  • Software

Follow these steps to customize asset classes:

  1. In SBM Composer, open the Asset Management process app.
  2. Edit the Asset Classes field in the Assets table.
  3. On the Options tab, modify the asset class values, including the prefixes for each value.
  4. Review and modify the following form actions to show and hide values based on your asset class modifications:
    • Form Click: Set asset Name according to asset type (Update form)
    • Form Click: Hide panels according asset type (multiple transition forms)
      Tip: You can update this form action for one form, then copy the action to the remaining forms. Be sure to delete the original form action after you copy the modified action to a form.
  5. Deploy your process app.

Adding Depreciation Types

Depreciation types are stored in the Depreciation Types auxiliary table. The types are used by the Asset Management orchestrations to calculate straight line and declining depreciation rates.

The following depreciation rates are provided:
  • Double Declining Balance - 3 years
  • Straight Line - 15 years
  • Straight Line - 5 years
  • Straight Line - 3 years
  • No Depreciation (no calculations when this is selected)

To add a depreciation type:

  1. In SBM Application Administrator, open the Manage Data feature, and then select Depreciation Types from the Tables list.
  2. Click New.
  3. Provide a title for the depreciation type.
  4. In the Expected Life box, specify the number of months for which depreciation should be calculated. The number must be divisible by 12.

    Depreciation for assets assigned to this type begins on the date set in the Depreciation Start Date field ends at the end of the period you specify here. The depreciation start date is typically set when an asset is acquired.

  5. Select one of the following depreciation methods:
    • 1

      Use to calculate straight line depreciation.

    • 2

      Use to calculate declining balance depreciation.

    • 0

      Depreciation will not be calculated for this type.

Tip: You can set a default depreciation type by editing the Assets project in SBM Application Administrator, and then setting a default value for the Depreciation Type field. If you want to set a default value for specific asset classes, such as hardware, create a new child project (with Asset Management as the parent project) for each asset class. Then, set the default depreciation type for that project and asset class.

Changing an Asset's Depreciation Date and Recalculating

There are times when you may need to modify an asset's depreciation method, cost, start date, or salvage value and recalculate the YTD Depreciation, Accumulated Depreciation, and Depreciation End Date for the asset. You must use the "Update Depreciation" transition after you modify the values since the depreciation fields are not calculated instantaneously.

In certain cases, the previously calculated Depreciation End Date prevents the depreciation fields from being updated. To stop the unnecessary overhead of processing assets that are past their Depreciation End Date, assets with an expired end date are ignored.

In some cases, when you change an asset's values, the Update Depreciation calculation will not update the item because its depreciation life has expired. If the calculated fields such as Depreciation End Date, YTD Depreciation, and Accumulated Depreciation are not being updated, you can use the "Reset Depreciation End Date" transition to clear the Depreciation End Date field. This allows depreciation orchestrations to run again. The "Reset Depreciation End Date" transition is only available to administrators.