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Fixed Assets

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
August 14, 2017
2 replies
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I am trying to figure out a way to track expenses that we incur on our fixed assets over time. For example say I have a Vehicle - Asset# 123 that is going in for oil changes, and then also has general service work, and the like (that are repairs and maintence costs) . I would like to be able to look at a report at some point in the future that would show me not only the original costs and depreciation on this vehicle, but all that I have spent on it over time, and what for (at least a descritption I put in at time of the expense). Is there a way to use the fixed asset system to do this? Or can it be done just in general without the FA system itself?

I was thinking that maybe I could set up a separate fixed asset asset item/list that points to say repairs and maintenace for each and every asset. So say for the vehicle listed above I would always add a 9 in front of hte expense "fixed asset" (it would be set up as Fixed Asset # 9123) so I could use that number to post vehicle expenses to. But it doesn't appear to aggregate or track all the individual expenses, only the "original cost". '

Thoughts?

Best answer by

Hi TomW,

A bit of a disclaimer, I am not an accountant, so my advice is only to point out how another QuickBooks user chose to record additional expenses for fixed assets.

I used to work in the support side of customer care and ran into a person who solved a similar issue. that they did was create a separate account for each fixed asset, then the expenses would be tracked individually. A custom summary report would then be filtered to show just the accounts that you want to see for the time period.

The Fixed Asset Manager in QuickBooks desktop is built to track depreciation expenses only, but I like the idea of the results you want. There is a good chance that another community member will respond with good advice as well.

-John

A

Anonymous

Answer

Hi TomW,

A bit of a disclaimer, I am not an accountant, so my advice is only to point out how another QuickBooks user chose to record additional expenses for fixed assets.

I used to work in the support side of customer care and ran into a person who solved a similar issue. that they did was create a separate account for each fixed asset, then the expenses would be tracked individually. A custom summary report would then be filtered to show just the accounts that you want to see for the time period.

The Fixed Asset Manager in QuickBooks desktop is built to track depreciation expenses only, but I like the idea of the results you want. There is a good chance that another community member will respond with good advice as well.

-John

FinfrockTax

You could always create an expense account for Vehicle Expenses, and then create subaccounts for the various types of vehicle expenses incurred. Your Vehicle asset account and its corresponding depreciation account wouldn't be impacted by these expenses (and shouldn't be). You could then create a custom report for the vehicle to show only the asset account, accumulated depreciation, vehicle expenses, and vehicle depreciation. If you know how to calculate and record depreciation without using the FA system, it's not necessary to use it. You can do this all directly in QB Pro, Essentials, or Plus.

T

TomWAuthor

I went down this path at one point but realized how unweildy this would become. I currently have about 100 vehicles/tractors that I wish to track this way. And of course there would be more in the future. So not a real clean way of handling it. Really shouldn't ask the GL to track something that is better suited to a sub-system of some sort. Just like I wouldn't do this for AR or AP, FA should not be any different...

I also looked at using a Class code to do this. But I already use Class to track all my expenses/sales/assets/etc. by "department". So could not figure out an easy way to pull that in either.

Really would be handy to have QB just add a field to any/all expenses allowing you to put an asset number or even just some user defined peice of info on the expense record that can then be reported on.

FinfrockTax

@TomW wrote:
I went down this path at one point but realized how unweildy this would become. I currently have about 100 vehicles/tractors that I wish to track this way. And of course there would be more in the future. So not a real clean way of handling it. Really shouldn't ask the GL to track something that is better suited to a sub-system of some sort. Just like I wouldn't do this for AR or AP, FA should not be any different...

I also looked at using a Class code to do this. But I already use Class to track all my expenses/sales/assets/etc. by "department". So could not figure out an easy way to pull that in either.

Really would be handy to have QB just add a field to any/all expenses allowing you to put an asset number or even just some user defined peice of info on the expense record that can then be reported on.

Great point on how this can become overly burdensome when you start taking on more and more assets. This would be nearly impossible to maintain in a large company with multiple locations or several hundred employees.

I personally have never had a company (on QB) attempt to identify expenses with specific assets in their reporting. Since assets typically provide value that cannot be quantified in financial statements, it didn't seem to be useful to try to align expenses with specific assets, especially when there is a fleet of vehicles, or large number of assets. Overall, knowing how much was spent in general for all assets in a particular category was usually sufficient and then an allocation could be done across all assets if a per asset amount is needed.

Is there a specific reason why this level of reporting would be needed? I don't know that the reasoning would change what is possible to do in QB, or any other system for that matter, but I'm just curious.

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