Category Archives: Options

Foreign Currency Conversion of Fixed Assets

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Companies primarily enter fixed assets in functional currency, which is the currency used for its principal business. So a U.S. based company would enter most of their assets with U.S. dollars. If they own subsidiaries in other countries than those assets can be entered with a different reporting currency. A currency conversion module would then be necessary to report in either functional or reporting currency.

Bassets eDepreciation includes an optional foreign currency module that allows the user to easily generate depreciation reports in different currencies.  The Currency Conversion module enables each individual asset to be stored in the native currency of that country. This flexibility permits reporting of the monthly depreciation expense in appropriate dollar amounts as needed.

Here is a screen shot of a sample exchange rate:

Foreign Currency 2

This form allows for an unlimited list of defined currencies. For each currency, you can then select the effective date, exchange rate and rate type. This combination of variables covers many different reporting scenarios based on the choice of rate type.

As an example, if the base currency were US Dollars, an asset with a currency type of EUR (Euro) would have its numbers multiplied by the correct currency conversion rate.  On the other hand, if an asset was stored with US Dollars and the report was generated for EUR, the dollars would be multiplied by the inverse rate (1/rate). The conversion rate for the current reporting period can be entered at any time prior to the report being generated.

An integrated foreign currency module greatly reduces the errors that can occur when using a spreadsheet or manually calculating conversions. All standard reports can be run in either functional or reporting currency to display cost, depreciation calculations and net book value using the selected currency.

Questions or comments on this post? We invite you to respond in the space below.

More information about Bassets eDepreciation software can be found at Bassets.net. While there you can set up a demonstration, download a free evaluation copy and get a personalized pricing estimate.

Bassets eDepreciation – Data Import

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Basset eDepreciation - Data ImportThe Bassets eDepreciation Data Import Module will easily import your existing fixed asset data. All selected fixed asset records will be imported from either Excel, ASCII text files or other fixed asset software programs.  A great feature is our on-screen preview which displays the existing fixed asset data in a simple spreadsheet like grid to assist in the field mapping. Bassets also allows for customized mapping of each field. A user defined import map allows each field in the source fixed asset data to be directed to the corresponding Bassets field and you can preview user selected sample fixed asset data for each field. No need to worry about mistakes because Bassets will verify the accuracy of all depreciation methods, first year conventions and recovery periods based upon the property type and acquisition date and then check each fixed asset record against the defined field lengths. When you process the import Bassets calculates fixed asset depreciation to tie out with existing total accumulated depreciation. It imports only the required depreciation schedules and will automatically build drop down or pick lists for any Master List fields.

Watch this video to see the details:

Questions or comments on this post? We invite you to respond in the space below.

More information about Bassets eDepreciation software can be found at Bassets.net. While there you can set up a demonstration, download a free evaluation copy and get a personalized pricing estimate.

4-4-5 Calendar to Calculate Period Depreciation

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A 4-4-5 calendar is used by some industries like retail and manufacturing to manage their accounting periods. This presents some advantages over a standard calendar since each period will always end on the same day of the week. So this allows for easier comparison of current year sales to prior years in retail and scheduling in manufacturing.

A 4-4-5 calendar only has 364 days (7 days * 52 weeks), so most companies will make an adjustment every 5 years or so with a 53 week year to account for the missing day. Here is a sample calendar for 2013:4-4-5 Calendar

The heart of a 4-4-5 module is a calendar that allows you to enter the first and last day of each accounting period. For example, if the first day of the year was December 30, 2012 and the last day of the first accounting period was January 26, 2013 then we would have a 4 week period of 28 days. The second period would follow the same pattern and then the third period would be five weeks. Each quarter would have 13 weeks or 91 days and every month would end on Saturday.

To calculate monthly depreciation with a 4-4-5 calendar, it is critical to calculate based on the number of days in the current period. The formula to calculate depreciation for the first period would be:

28 days

—————- X Annual Depreciation = Period Depreciation

365 days

This way the annual depreciation is properly spread based on the actual number of days in each period. Many fixed asset software packages do not offer this type of alternate calculation and will just divide the annual depreciation by 12 periods. If your business follows a 4-4-5 calendar then make sure that your depreciation software correctly matches your period accounting.

Questions or comments about this post? We invite you to respond in the space below.

More information about Bassets eDepreciation software can be found at Bassets.net. While there you can set up a demonstration, download a free evaluation copy and get a personalized pricing estimate.

Interface Depreciation Journal Entries to General Ledger

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To report depreciation expense on monthly financial statements, most fixed asset systems include an expense report. This report will summarize the depreciation calculations by general ledger code for a selected accounting period. For more information:

http://www.depreciationguru.com/2012/03/monthly-depreciation-expense-journal-entries/

There are two main reasons to account for monthly depreciation expense:

  • Match expense to income
  • Accurately represent the value of your assets in the balance sheet

If your organization has a large number of assets then you can save a lot of time and avoid potential errors with a general ledger interface option. This will automate the monthly upload of depreciation journal entries into your General Ledger.

Interface Depreciation Journal

A G/L Interface module allows you to run a procedure to export monthly depreciation to an output file. This file sorted and totaled by G/L Code for both Debit and Credit. A G/L Interface enables you to:

  • select the data fields to export
  • define the type of export file
  • choose the month to process
  • limit the processing for a company, division or other entity

To define the output file, you can select the necessary data fields in the order required. For each data field, set the length, number of decimals and/or default value. This ensures that the output file matches the required format of your general ledger’s batch import module.

Questions or comments about this post? We invite you to respond in the space below.

More information about Bassets eDepreciation software can be found at Bassets.net. While there you can set up a demonstration, download a free evaluation copy and get a personalized pricing estimate.