Adding or Editing Fixed Asset Types

Fixed assets need to be categorised in order to determine how they are depreciated (including their useful life, depreciation method, etc.) These categories are created in IRIS Financials by adding accounts in the ASSETTYPE ledger.

By default, four asset types are provided – furniture, IT equipment, land/buildings, and motor vehicles. Further asset types are not usually required unless you are likely to purchase plant and machinery. This would require the creation of new nominals to record the cost and depreciation of the fixed asset, together with the amending of applicable key lists.

You may however want to add additional categories of the same asset type, but with a different useful life. For example, you could create several IT Equipment categories based on a useful life of 24, 36, and 48 months so that they can be depreciated accordingly. This topic describes how to do this and how to check the default asset types and amend if necessary.

If you add new asset types here, you also need to add them to the applicable key lists. For more information, please see Adding a New Fixed Asset Type to the ASSET_TYPE Keylist.

  1. Select Masters > Accounts from the menu bar.
  2. Double-click the ASSETTYPE ledger from the List of Ledgers dialog.
  3. Four asset type accounts are provided by default – FURNITURE, ITEQUIPMENT, LANDBUILD and MOTOR. Click the Add button to add a new asset type and enter the asset type code such as ITEQUIP48.
  4. Enter or edit the asset type Title then select the Indices tab.
  5. The Indices tab is used to select how you want to report on the asset type. If you want to report on asset types under a particular funding arrangement, select the applicable index and check box.

    The ACTIVITIES and FUNDTYPE indices may be mandatory (depending on your system setup), therefore if you do not wish to use indices for reporting, select the XNODET for both indices.

  6. Select the User Fields tab. Check/complete the fields as follows:

  7. Select the Security tab which is used to determine who can access the asset type. We would advise restricting Modify access to the System Administrator (select ) then View and Post access as required.
  8. Once you have completed the relevant information, click the Apply button to save the asset type. A warning will be displayed if any mandatory information is missing which will need to be completed before the asset type can be saved.

If you have added a new fixed asset type, you now need to add the type to the ASSET_TYPE key list. Please see the Adding a Fixed Asset to the ASSET_TYPE Key List article.