Fixed Assets is an important part of the accounting. It is usually one of the areas that are implemented in SAP, and often it goes in the same phase as all other Core Finance components: General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable.
You often need to transfer data from the old (legacy) system to SAP. This process is called “migration”. There are some specifics in migration of Fixed Assets data. Let’s look into the steps that you need to make and discuss them in details.
- Detach Fixed Assets and General Ledger
There is a special type of reconciliation accounts in SAP General Ledger: Assets. You assign this type of reconciliation account to the GL accounts specifically created to hold Assets acquisition costs and accumulated depreciation.
The link via reconciliation account ensures that each transaction with Fixed Assets in your SAP system automatically posts in General Ledger. You don’t need to post the same amount twice in General Ledger and Fixed Assets subledger. It also ensures that you cannot post any amount directly to the GL account linked with the Fixed Assets module.
However, you need to break this link between the ledgers during the migration. Technically speaking, you migrate GL account balances and Fixed Assets values separately.
To do so, change the account type from “Assets” to empty in transaction code OAMK, which you can also find in IMG: Financial Accounting -> Asset Accounting -> Preparing for Production Startup -> Production Startup -> Set or Reset Reconciliation Accounts.
- Set parameters for migration
Before migrating data for Fixed Assets in SAP, you need to tell the system what you migrate and what to do with migration data. Most important parameters for the migration are migration date and last closed period in the legacy system.
Last posted period will tell SAP that it needs to calculate depreciation and post it in the Fixed Assets module for the next posting period. For example, if your go-live date is the 1st of January 2017, then last posted period is 12 / 2016.
Migration date is the date when SAP processes the migration transactions. It can either be the last day of the previous period, or the first day of the new period. Please note that if there are differences in depreciation amount posted during the migration and calculated by SAP, they will be posted in the next period after the migration. In the example above, if your migration date is 01.01.2017, adjustment posting will be planned to P2/2017. If you migration date is 31.12.2016, then adjustment will be posted in P1/2017.
You can find both of the transactions for date-related migration parameters in IMG: Asset Accounting -> Asset Data Transfer -> Parameters for Data Transfer -> Date Specifications.
There are a number of other parameters that you can set up for asset migration. They are relevant to amounts that you migrate. For example, you can ask SAP to recalculate the depreciation amount in the past years, or recalculate the insurance value. All these parameters are listed in the Options section of IMG next to the section I mentioned just above.
- Prepare the migration tool
There are two tools available for Fixed Assets migration in SAP: using Microsoft Excel integrated tool, and using the generic migration transaction for Fixed Assets.
Although Excel tool is available and listed in IMG node Financial Accounting -> Asset Accounting -> Asset Data Transfer, I have never seen it working. The most common case is migration of Fixed Assets using the generic “manual” tool.
There are 7 transactions in that tool:
- AS91 / AS92 / AS93 allow you to migrate individual fixed assets. These 3 transactions are for Creation, Editing and Display of the migration data.
- AS81 / AS82 / AS83 / AS84 allow you to migrate group assets. These 4 transactions are for Creation, Editing and Display of the migration data, and for creation of the group asset sub-numbers.
There are two distinct ways for migration of assets capitalized in the current and in the previous fiscal years. Of course, this note is only relevant if you migrate mid-year. The difference is that you only migrate values for acquisition costs and accumulated depreciation for previous years’ assets. All transactions in the current year should be posted as individual transactions in the relevant section of the entry transaction.
The Current year’s Fixed Assets will only have the Transactions section filled in, and that section will include the acquisition and accumulated depreciation transactions too.
The table below summarizes the section within transaction AS91 that you need to use to enter parts of the fixed assets migration data.
| Data | Current Year | Previous year |
|---|---|---|
| Acquisition Cost | Transactions | Takeover Values |
| Previous Years depreciation | n/a | Takeover Values |
| Current Year depreciation | Transactions | Takeover Values |
| Current Year transactions | Transactions | Transactions |
You should familiarise yourself with transactions AS91/AS81 before creating the migration tools for your project. When you know each part of AS91 / AS81, you can create LSMWs for transactions AS91 and AS81 (if necessary).
- Preparing your legacy data
You import data from the legacy system into Excel or any other data management application. It is very likely that the structure of the data will not be exactly the same as you expect it to be imported into LSMWs prepared on the previous step. That is why you will need to manipulate the data, sometimes enhancing it.
Do not forget to document each of your manipulation for audit trail purposes.
- Import data
Once your import tool and source data are ready, you can input data in SAP. LSMWs using transactions AS91 and AS81 (if necessary) will create asset master records with legacy values.
Of course, it is a good idea to dry run the migration in your test system to eliminate the possible hiccups and prepare the solution for known problems beforehand.
Your GL account balances should be migrated separately using any of the available tools, for example LSMW for transaction FB01.
- Reconcile the ledgers
If you look back at the very beginning of this article, you remember that Fixed Assets and General Ledger accounts were detached during the migration. Now, when the migration is over, you reconcile the ledgers.
To check the balance of GL account, you can run the transaction FS10N or FAGLB03 depending on the version of your SAP system.
To check the balance of your Fixed Assets, you can use many reports in the Information System section of the Fixed Assets menu. For example, there is transaction S_ALR_87011964 – Asset Balances by Asset class. Each Asset Class only has one GL account for acquisition costs and depreciation, meaning that transaction will provide you with information for reconciliation.
I values do not match you can edit migrated Fixed Assets data in SAP using transactions AS92 / AS82.
- Link Fixed Assets and General Ledger accounts
Once the balances on GL accounts and Fixed Assets ledgers are reconciled, you put the link between the ledgers back. Use transaction OAMK for that. Change reconciliation account type to “Assets” for the GL accounts you use.
These seven steps will complete your migration cycle for Fixed Assets.
If there are any questions you have about the Fixed Assets or any other SAP module, why not ask them to SAP Expert?