TL;DR

This video walks through how to manage your company’s fixed assets in Dynamics 365 Business Central. It covers setting up depreciation books (company and tax), creating and duplicating assets, using Copilot summaries for quick insights, logging maintenance and insurance details, and organizing main and component assets. The tutorial shows how Business Central centralizes asset setup, tracking, and reporting—all from one streamlined fixed asset card.

I want to show you the wide functionality that’s available in the fixed assets card in Dynamics 365 Business Central. We’ll be taking a brief look at the fixed assets setup and the fixed asset card, and then we’ll look at the main components of the fixed asset card. We’ll cover maintenance, logging, insurance, and also the ability to set up a main asset and have component assets that roll up to it. So let’s get started. There are basically two things you need to do to set up the fixed asset system in Business Central. The first thing is the fixed asset setup. It’s really simple; there’s not a whole lot to it. Essentially, I’m identifying the depreciation book, and this is important because this is the depreciation book in which we’ll be recording depreciation on a regular basis, as well as acquisitions and retirements. It’s also the book that will create the GL entries, the general ledger entries, so you need to identify that. I’m going to allow posting to main assets and we’ll take a look at that when we look at main assets versus component assets. There are some basic numbering systems you can set up; you can see the two that I’ve got here: fixed asset numbers and insurance numbers. That’s all you really need to do on this screen.

Fixed Asset Setup in Business Central

Company and Tax Depreciation Books

Let’s take a look at the depreciation books. As I said before, I’ve got one set up for the company book, and the importance of this is that transactions in this book will be written to the general ledger in Business Central. You can see that integration here; that’s what they’re talking about when they refer to integration to the general ledger. I can have multiple books. You can have tax books as well; we’ll look at two of those. But you don’t want the tax book entries to go to the general ledger.

I’ve chosen to set up a book for California tax—this California income tax book. I’m going to record depreciation on this and keep track of those assets just for my California income tax return. You can see here I don’t have the integration enabled for this tax book and I don’t want it. I also have this book included as part of the duplication list, and I’m going to show you that a little later. Then there’s the federal income tax book, another depreciation book I have set up for my U.S. federal income tax calculations. You’ll notice I’ve got some basic information here, but more importantly, I do not have GL integration enabled, and this is what you want for tax books.

You don’t need tax books; most people have just one company depreciation book set up to handle acquisitions, depreciation, and retirements of their fixed asset system, and this then integrates to the general ledger and that’s all you really need. If you want to also record the details for income tax, you can do that easily. You can add as many other books as you want in the system, and then you have to make sure that you record transactions that happen to the individual assets—acquisitions, depreciation, and retirements—on each of those books. Including those books in a duplication list is an easy way to do it.

Fixed Asset Card Overview

Accessing the Fixed Asset List

Next, let’s take a look at the fixed asset card itself. I’m at my Business Central homepage and I want to look at the fixed assets, so I’ll click on this. This shows me all the fixed assets I have in my system. This is just a basic list page; there are a lot of these in Business Central, and this is the one focused on fixed assets. Here are all my different fixed assets. Let’s open one up. This is an example of a fixed asset card. This is where I have most of the information about my fixed asset all in one place. I can modify this page if I want to; I can add some additional fields and I can also move fields around. I have these basic sections on the card.

General Information, Classes, and Subclasses

We’ve got general information; you can see that information here. I’ve set up fixed asset class codes; you can see the ones I’ve set up here. These are all user-defined; they’re just labels basically, and you can set as many up as you want. I also have a subclass code; you can see those subclasses here, and again I can set up as many of those as I want. This is just a way to organize fixed assets and enhance reporting. We can also identify locations in my system where these assets belong or where they’re located, and we can do that here. We can also assign responsible employees to an asset. So if I have a laptop, I can assign that to specific employees and they can track it that way.

Budgets and Capital Planning

We can also set up a budget for fixed assets and, as I purchase those fixed assets, I can assign them against that budget. If you want to get very detailed on your budgeting for fixed assets—which might be a good idea if you have a large capital expense area—then you may want to use the budget functionality in fixed assets to track those individual purchases against the annual budget.

Depreciation Books on an Individual Asset

Let’s take a look at the depreciation books I have set up for this specific asset. I’ve got three of them set up for this asset. I’ve got the company depreciation book that I need to record depreciation, acquisitions, and retirements and also feed that information to the general ledger, so that’s an important one for me. For that, I’m using the straight-line method for depreciation, which is pretty standard. I’m also using two tax books here: I’ve got a California income tax book and the federal income tax book. Again, these aren’t required; if you want to get a lot of detail on the calculations for your tax books, then you might want to use those, but it’s not required. I happen to have a different depreciation method on the tax books, and here I’m using double-declining balance to compute the depreciation for my tax books. You can see that information here, along with information about the balance and the book value. We’ll take a look at how this is established a little later on.

Maintenance, Vendors, and Rolling Stock Fields

If I want to, I can also keep track of maintenance for this particular item. I can specify a vendor number; this is my general payables vendor from a list, and you can see that here. I can also set up a maintenance vendor for this, specifying who I go to in order to maintain this asset if I need some service on it. If I want to also record the service dates and the warranty dates, I can do that as well. It’s not required, but it gives me more information that lives in my Business Central system. If I have a fixed asset that’s rolling stock, I can record information about that in the final section down here. You can see I’ve got a vehicle license plate, vehicle year, and some other information about that particular asset. That allows me to add even more information about the asset into my fixed asset card in Business Central.

Pictures, Attachments, and Specifications

I can also assign a picture to it; you can see a picture here. If I had an attachment, I could also assign attachments to this particular asset, so if I had a purchase order, purchase quote, or purchase invoice related to this asset, I could add it here. If I had specifications about the asset, I could add those as well.

Using Copilot on the Fixed Asset Card

There’s a new functionality here from Copilot: I’ve got a summary. I can open that up and what will happen is Copilot will look at this fixed asset in Business Central and give me a lot more information about this fixed asset—where it’s located and specifics about how it’s accounted for—and you can see that information here. This information is basic information that’s already in the system, but what Copilot does in the summary (and the summary function is available on all cards and most transactions) is it allows the user to easily see what’s happening on this transaction or on this card in Business Central. This is pretty helpful. I’ve got this information here and I can drill down on it and get more information. If I drill down on this, I get information about this particular asset, where it was acquired, and when it was acquired. I can drill down further and get more information on specific transactions in Business Central that created this fixed asset. The Copilot summaries are being rolled out by Microsoft; they’re included right in Business Central. They give you more information about the particular item that you’re looking at, whether it’s a card or a transaction, and they’re very helpful in giving you a summarized view of what’s happening. I can also choose to show more and it’ll go and look for more detail on that. This is a good way not only to get information about an item in Business Central, but also to help you navigate to those specific items.

Creating New Fixed Assets

Creating a New Asset from a Purchase Invoice (Acquisition Flow)

What I’d like to do now is create two new assets. One I’m going to purchase from a purchase invoice, and the second I’m going to copy. I just want to show you how the flow goes for this particular functionality in Business Central. I’ve got another video that shows multiple ways that you can purchase fixed assets and add them into the system in various ways, but first of all, let’s take a look at a purchase invoice.

Here’s a standard purchase invoice in Business Central. I’m just going to enter the purchase invoice information. You can see I’ve got a vendor identified and some dates; this is standard Business Central purchase invoice functionality. Now I’m going to add a fixed asset. These are the options I have in the purchase invoice and the purchase order. I’m just going to do a purchase invoice and I want to add a fixed asset. I specify that, and for the number I can add to an existing fixed asset if I want to—we’ll take a look at that from a maintenance standpoint—but right now what I want to do is add a new asset. So I’m going to hit New.

That brings up a dialog page where I can add information about this new asset. I’m going to specify a fixed asset class code; this is tangible property, so I’ll add that. I’ve got a subclass code; it’s going to be equipment, so I’ll add that and assign it to a location. There’s no need to assign it to a responsible employee; there isn’t one employee responsible for this particular asset, so I’ll leave that. If I’ve got the serial number—which I probably do if I’m looking at a purchase invoice—I’m going to enter that here. This is not a main asset and it’s not a component asset either; we’ll take a look at that later. Here I’ve got the basic information about this fixed asset item. I want to put a purchase date in here, and this is a seven-year asset, so I’m going to declare that.

Right now it’s going to use the company depreciation book because I have that set up in the fixed asset setup screen; you can see that here. I’m not going to add the tax books at this point in time; I’ll show that in another video. I’ve got more information about maintenance that I can fill out right now if I want to, but I can also go back and fill it out later from the asset card. What we’re doing here is creating a new asset in Business Central fixed assets; it’s going to be a new card. I’m going to go ahead and say OK, and then we look at this line. I’ve got a lot of information related to fixed assets here. We’ve got fixed asset posting type; this is an acquisition. We’ll take a look later at how I can add maintenance cost to this. This is also going to be part of my insurance policy, so I want to list it here. If I click on this, it’s going to show the insurance policies I have available; this is going to be a listed item on this particular policy, so I put that in. The posting date is going to default from the transaction date, so I’ll leave that. I’ll add further cost information about this asset and also report the purchase invoice accurately. That’s all I need to do now. I’ve put in the purchase invoice; this could just as easily be a purchase order as well. I’ve identified the line as a fixed asset item, so I’m adding that information in the purchase invoice. It’s going to add it to the fixed asset list and then I can post it.

One of the things that I really like about Business Central is the preview posting functionality. This allows me to run the posting process without actually posting the transaction. The benefit is that I can see if there are any errors before I commit the transaction, and I can also review to make sure it’s doing what I want it to do. On the preview posting screen, we can see it’s going to do two GL entries; I can open this GL entry and see the debit and credit. This is going to go into my fixed asset account on my balance sheet and it’s going to go to payables, which is what I want, because this is a payables invoice. That’s exactly what I want. I can also look at the fixed asset entry; I know I’m going to add this, so it’s going to add the invoice acquisition type to my fixed asset ledger and we’ll take a look at that later. Everything looks fine, so I’m going to go ahead and post it. Once I post, I’m done with that process. That’s just one way you can add a fixed asset in Business Central.

Duplicating an Existing Asset and Acquiring It

Let’s take a look at a second way, which is to duplicate an asset. Back on the fixed asset page, I’ve got all these fixed assets and I’m going to duplicate a laptop. I want to duplicate an asset that I already have in my system, and it’s easy to do. We can go right to the fixed asset card we’re looking at and copy the fixed asset. This is going to create a new asset that has all the information about this asset, which includes, in this case, the depreciation books (which I want) and some other information. I can specify the number of copies I want; in this case I only want one, and I’m going to use the number series to assign a fixed asset number to this, and then I’m done.

After I confirm, we’re still looking at the original fixed asset page. When we go back and look at our list, we should have a new one at the bottom. Here’s the one that we added with the purchase invoice and here’s the one that we just copied. When we open it, there are a couple of important things. I’ve got the basic information on this item; you can see that here. What I don’t have is acquisition—it has not been acquired—which means this is still something I have to do. Right now it’s kind of in a fixed asset holding area; it’s a fixed asset record, but it doesn’t know anything about the cost because I just copied the asset. I didn’t copy the acquisition transaction or any of that financial information. I did, however, copy over the depreciation books; you can see that here.

The next step is to acquire this asset. I’m going to go ahead and acquire it, which means I’m going to take it from that holding area and create a fixed asset for it, but I’m not showing the purchase part yet; we’ll do that later. When I choose to acquire, a dialog sequence appears. I’ve got options for how I want to post this in Business Central. I’m going to use the GL account and the fixed asset holding account. That’s all I need. What this will do is post a debit to the fixed asset account in the general ledger and credit the fixed asset clearing account.

Next, I want to put the cost in for this because, even though I copied the fixed asset, I only copied descriptive parts of the fixed asset; I did not copy the cost, since almost every fixed asset purchase is going to have a different cost and it doesn’t really make sense to copy that. So I’m creating a fixed asset and offsetting that to fixed asset clearing, specifying the amount, setting the acquisition date, and then I’m done with the dialog. Before posting, I can look at the journal entry—this is a fixed asset journal ledger entry. This new asset has three depreciation books: the company depreciation book, which I want, and two income tax depreciation books. I want to recognize that, so I’m going to use the duplication list. It’s going to look at my books, and because I had the income tax books set up as part of the duplication list, it will take the information from this particular journal entry and add the value to those different books as well. If I don’t check that, then it will just add the value to the company book and I’d have to go back and redo this. Using the duplication list is a simple way to get it done for all three books that happen to be in this asset. That’s all I really need for this fixed asset journal entry, so I post it.

When I go back to the asset I copied from another asset, I can see that this asset has now been acquired; you can see that the toggle has been set. If we look at the depreciation books, we can see that the company book was updated for the book value. There’s one other step I need in this case: I need to post a fixed asset journal. Those were created automatically when I created the fixed asset journal ledger entries. I select the batch we just completed and go to the fixed asset journals; here I have the information in the fixed asset journals. What this will do is update the tax books—you can see the tax books listed here. It’s going to update those, and this batch is ready to go. I’ve got some other assets that are still in the acquisition phase, but we’re focusing on these laptops. I can go ahead and post this. If I want, I can preview the posting as well. In the preview, I can open up the ledger and see the acquisitions. Again, this is going to add the acquisition transactions to the California income tax book and the federal income tax book. After posting and going back to the asset, I can see it’s been updated. This is exactly what I want. The asset is all set up and ready to use; I can depreciate it against three different books. All I need to do now is clear the fixed asset clearing account, which I can do with a purchase invoice, a purchase order, or maybe just a general journal entry. That’s easy to do, and we’ll leave that for now.

Back at the fixed asset list, these are all the assets I have in my system. The last column on the right shows whether each asset has been acquired or not. I can see that one particular asset still needs a little bit of work; that’s not the HP laptop we just did. The laptop we just worked on is this one—this is the one we copied from an existing asset and then went through the acquisition steps and added the information to three different depreciation books. The one above it is the item that we added through the purchase invoice; that one’s all ready to go.

Logging Maintenance on Fixed Assets

Adding Vendor Maintenance via Purchase Invoice

Next, I want to show you how you can log maintenance costs against existing fixed assets. It’s pretty easy to do; there are a number of ways you can do it. You can do it through a purchase invoice, which I’ll show you, but you can also just add a transaction from the fixed asset card. What I want to do is add some maintenance cost to this server right here—this is a Dell server—and I’m going to add some maintenance cost to it. I’ll go up to Purchasing, look at my purchase invoices, and add a new one. I’ll select a vendor and put an invoice number in. Since we’re looking at fixed assets, I’m going to select a fixed asset line. We’re not creating a new asset now; we’re adding maintenance cost to an asset. I select this server, so it brings up the information about the server. The fixed asset posting type is going to be Maintenance. I’m going to add “Operating system upgrade” as the description and then finish out this purchase invoice by putting the cost in. If I wanted to, I could have multiple fixed assets in this invoice—for example, if I were upgrading a number of different servers, I could list them all on this invoice and allocate the maintenance cost to each item. Once I’m ready, I post the invoice. Then I can go back and look at the asset. From the fixed asset card for this particular server, I go down to History and look at the maintenance ledger entries. Here’s the entry that we just posted; it went to this fixed asset and is now part of that record. In this case, I recorded a maintenance cost supplied by an outside vendor.

Recording Internal Maintenance Activities

I can also record maintenance items done internally without a cost. To do that, I go to the Fixed Asset tab, choose Maintenance Registration, and add an item. I might just record that we did something here—for example, I could note that I changed the network card. I had some network cards in my inventory, I took one out, put it in this particular server, and now I’m done. I can add additional information if I want, but all I need to do is recognize that this maintenance activity occurred. I can add additional items here if needed, but I’m done with this one. So that’s basically two ways to add maintenance items to your asset: using a purchase invoice and recognizing it as maintenance when there’s a cost from an outside source, or recording internal maintenance activities directly from the asset card in Business Central without a financial cost.

Maintenance Reporting

Let’s take a look at some reports related to maintenance. I can do that by going to the All Reports area and then to the Fixed Asset area. You can see that I’ve got a number of different reports related to fixed assets, and I’m interested in the maintenance ones. First, let’s look at the Maintenance Register, a standard report in Business Central. When I run it, I get a list of all the maintenance activities against my fixed assets. This is an easy way to see if you’ve done the maintenance on particular items; you’ve got that information right here. You can also record service dates on the asset itself in the fixed asset card. Another report I like is called Maintenance Details. When I open that, there’s a little bit more information. It’s a standard report that you can modify if you want to, but basically it shows information by asset about different maintenance transactions that have been done to each asset. You can see that detail in the report.

Insurance Functionality for Fixed Assets

Setting Up Insurance Policies and Linking Assets

Next, let’s take a look at the insurance functionality related to fixed assets in Business Central. In Business Central, you can set up a number of different insurance policies. You may have several related to property or liability. Let’s look at one I set up. It has basic information about the policy; there’s nothing surprising here, but it does allow me to assign assets to this policy. We did that in the purchase invoice that we looked at earlier. This is the policy; I can have multiple policies if I want. I can also add existing fixed assets to an insurance policy. So if I did not add an asset to the policy during the acquisition phase, I can go back and do it later. To do that, I use the Fixed Asset Insurance journal. Here I’m adding a particular fixed asset that’s already in my system and just adding it to the policy. You can see I’ve got a basic amount entered; I go ahead and post it. This isn’t making a financial entry; it’s just posting the linkage to that insurance policy. If I need to take an item off the policy or adjust the cost, I can use a credit memo.

Insurance Reports: Registered, Insured, and Uninsured Assets

If you’re tracking insurance in Business Central on your fixed assets, there are a few reports that are helpful. In the All Reports area under Fixed Assets, I can look at the Insurance Register. This shows me all the fixed assets that are currently registered for this insurance policy. It’s a list you can go through and modify if you want—maybe you see an asset that should not be on there or notice another asset that should be added. This is a good list to keep up to date so you know what’s insured and what’s listed on your insurance policy. Another way to look at the assets you have insured is a more concise report that lists all the fixed assets; this is an easy one to hand to your insurance person to verify that the details are correct. Finally, there’s a report for uninsured fixed assets. This is important as well because it shows all the fixed assets in your system that are not assigned to an insurance policy. If you have a listed insurance policy, you’ll want to run this report to make sure you’ve got all the assets on that policy that you want covered. This is a good list to audit: you go through it and make sure that your insurance policy is up to date.

Main Assets and Component Assets

Next, I want to show you a main asset and the components of that main asset. This is functionality in Business Central fixed assets that allows you to tie together individual assets to a main asset. The main asset and the component assets are all listed as regular fixed assets. Let’s take a look at one. This is my main asset; you can see it’s a main asset because it’s marked as such. I’ve got a picture of that asset here. This asset is made up of different components. If I go to Related → Main Asset → Main Asset Components, I can see the three components that roll up to make that main asset. This is handy if you’ve got component items that may move from one asset to another asset or if you have parts that are replaced on a regular basis. This functionality can be very handy for tying all of these related assets together. As I showed you in the original setup, I can choose to allow posting directly to the main asset or disallow it. Depending on what you want to do with this functionality, you may choose to post to the main asset, to the component assets, or a combination based on your accounting policies.

Wrap-Up and Next Steps

We took a good look at fixed asset cards in Dynamics 365 Business Central. We looked at some fixed asset setup pieces, we looked at the fixed asset card itself and all the information that’s available, and we saw the ability to navigate to other areas to get more detail if you want to. We looked at maintenance, how we can log those transactions and report those transactions. We took a look at insurance to make sure that your insurance policies are up to date with listed property, and we looked at the main asset and component functionality within Business Central. If you’re ready to deploy Copilot in Microsoft 365, download our free guide using the link in our video description.