Dynamics 365 Business Central – Fixed Assets Module Demo

Let’s take a quick look at using Fixed Assets in Dynamics 365 Business Central. These are the items that we’re going to take a look at.

Today I’m going to show you how to add assets and then acquire those assets within Business Central. There’s three ways to do it and then we’re going to look at how you can easily calculate depreciation for multiple periods of time. Then I also just want to show you how to record maintenance for specific assets.

The first thing i want to do is look at adding assets into business central. There’s three ways you can do it. You can enter it manually, you can import it. We’re going to take a look at how to import it from Excel. You can also purchase a new Fixed Asset with a PO or a PO invoice. Then after you do that, we go through the acquire functionality so it gets set up as a Fixed Asset in the fixed asset journal, but also in the general journal. This is my list of existing fixed assets in the system you can see I’ve got about 20 or 30 of them.

What I want to do is add a new one in manually within the user interface in business central, it’s easy to do. Let’s click on new, put in a description, I’m going to assign a fixed asset class code to it. Use tangible. There’s a sub class code I can select. We’ll use vehicles. I can also put it into a location. So these are multiple locations I have in my system. I’m going to select that one. I can also add a serial number here. I can attach documents. I can put a picture of the asset in here. If I want to, I’m going to put in a depreciation start date. This is going to be a three-year asset, so I’m setting up this new asset and I can always come back and add additional information if I want to, but this is the basic information I need.

So let’s take a look at how I can import into this screen as well. I’m going to use the edit in Excel functionality in Business Central. It’s going to pull down all the existing fixed assets into an excel spreadsheet. These are all assets I have in my system right now and currently these are the fields that can be downloaded into this. Edit an excel function and you can see those here. So, I’m going to do is I’m going to add one asset I could easily add multiple assets. Here’s asset that we just added right here in row 29. I’m going to add another Ford 250 truck and I’m going to copy this part of it. That’s all I have to do.

Then I can import this back into business central, it will automatically assign a fixed asset number. So let’s do that. That updated successfully. Let’s take a look at it I’ve now got two F250 trucks. This is the one that I just added. Now, let’s look at how I can easily add a fixed asset to the purchase order functionality or the purchase invoice functionality within business central. Here’s the purchase order form. I’m going to look up the vendor. I’m going to purchase it from this vendor here. I’m going to enter a vendor invoice so I can post it right away and I’m done with the header now.

Let’s go take a look at the line so I’ve got different types of lines here in this purchase order line I’m going to select fixed asset. So let’s do that go into the number here and I could add additional expense to existing fixed assets but what I want to do is add a new one so I’ll hit new. It brings up this dialog box. I’ll fill in the fixed asset code and the sub class code. I can fill in as much information here as I want to so I’ll just fill in just a little bit more. I’ve filled in some information about the depreciation on this then I’ll just hit okay. We’ll put in the quantity and the amount and now I’ve got this purchase order ready to go so I’m going to post it I’m going to receive it and invoice it at the same time.

So now I’ve added three assets in three different methods into business central. Let’s take a look at these assets. This is the one I entered manually in the user interface. You can see the information still here but there’s one step I need to do and that’s acquire this asset. This is a functionality that records the cost of the asset. You can see there’s a notification right here. I’m just going to click on that. I’m going to acquire it. I’ll go through this dialog session and I use fixed asset clearing account here. This allows me to keep my general ledger in balance for fixed asset purchases and determine where these fixed asset purchases are in their life cycle. Here i’m going to enter the cost and the acquisition date and then I want to create the journal here. So let’s mark that, hit finish. This is the journal entry that’s going to be created and posted to recognize the purchase of this asset. Here you can see the accounts it’s going to debit fixed asset. It’s going to credit. This clearing account I’m going to post that.

Here’s the second asset that I entered. I entered this through edit in excel add this into the system get assigned an asset number and also these other aspects of the asset I’m going to put in the depreciation start date, the years and that’s it.

So now I finish this record but I need to acquire it still. So I’m going to hit acquire ,look at my fixed asset. clearing account this is the one I use. Hit next, put in the amount. I want to create the journal entry so I’m going to mark that, hit finish. Here’s the journal entry for the second asset that I entered through the edit in excel function. I’m going to post this and I’m done.

Now let’s go to the third asset here. This is the one that was purchased through a purchase order. Let’s take a look at that. This one has already been acquired. You can see that here and I can tell that because it has a book value. Before I acquire an asset within Business Central, the book value will be zero. Once I go through the acquire process, I’ll have the book value of it and the book value will be maintained to the life of the asset in Business Central.

So now I have my three assets that I just added in various methods. Let’s take a look at depreciation. This is the calculate depreciation dialog box. Here I’m telling business central what calculation I want to do for this particular session and what I’m going to do is I’m going to calculate the depreciation up to January 31st 2022. The system will look at all the assets that have been acquired and are still active and we’ll calculate the depreciation based on the depreciation statistics in that particular asset. So I’ve got this one ready to go I’m going to hit ok. It creates a journal entry. Here’s the depreciation journal entry that’s created so I can just go ahead and post that at any point in time we can look at a specific asset and see the transactions that have been processed against it, go to history and these are the ledger entries. So I’ve got the acquisition here and I’ve got the depreciation that we just ran for this particular asset and there’s one more thing I want to show you.

I want to show you how to record maintenance costs for a particular asset. It’s really pretty easy to do and I’m going to do it using a purchase invoice. So let’s go to purchasing look up a purchased invoice and I’ll create a new one here. So I’ve entered the header information and what i want to do in the type here. I’m going to select a fixed asset. I want to select the asset to which I’m going to allocate the maintenance costs it’s going to be this one here. Let’s do that. Finish up this invoice and then what i want to do is I want to scroll over a little bit to the right here and change the fixed asset posting type. It’s going to be maintenance. This will create a different type of ledger entry for this particular fixed asset. Let’s select that then when i’m done i can just post this. Let’s take a look at that fixed asset and take a look at the maintenance record. Here’s a maintenance cost that we just posted with the payables invoice.

This was a quick look at the fixed assets functionality in Dynamics 365 Business Central. We looked at adding assets three different ways. We looked at how you can easily calculate depreciation and also how you can record maintenance for specific assets if you want to do that.