Fixed Assets (FA)

Question 1

How do you take the balances onto fixed asset reconciliation accounts during data take-on?

Answer 1

Normally you cannot post direct to reconciliation accounts. However, there is a configuration transaction (OAK5/OAMK), which can be used to tempoarily remove the reconciliation flags to allow the balances to be journal’ed onto the fixed asset reconciliation accounts.

Note this is a very popular interview question for FI/CO roles with FI-AA components.

Question 2

Name three ways of posting acquisition cost to a fixed asset master

Answer 2

1. F-90 - Acquisition with Vendor
2. **ABZON **- Acquisition with automatic offsetting entry
3. ABZP - from affiliated company
4. AIBU - from settlement of an assite under construction
5. From goods receipt (or invoice receipt depending on system setup) relating to a purchase order

Question 3

What are sub-assets?

What would be a typical use for them in SAP?

Answer 3

Sub-assets are four digit reference numbers that are linked to the main asset number

For example, if an asset 31000050 exists for a piece of machinery which initially cost $100,000, a sub-asset asset 0001 could be created and used to book additional cost (maybe a machinery upgrade) against the original asset. Both assets exist seperately and can be reported as cuh or together.

When running the asset reports, you can either run for the 31000050 asset or together with the sub-asset 31000050-0001

If you have multiple sub-assets you can report based on 31000050-*

Using this approach, asset components costs can be stored seperately but reported together.

Note that these sub-assets are depreciated independently of their main asset.

This is a popular interview question.

Question 4

What is an asset under construction?

Answer 4

**Assets under construction (AuC’s) **can be used to track investment cost during projects or asset assembly. Following completion their costs can be settled to other fixed assets or to other CO cost objects such as real internal orders or cost centers.

For example, the contstruction of a new building, the various costs involved (engineering, utility cost, etc) could be collected under an AUC before being settled to an asset under the “buildings” asset class at the end of the project.

AuC’s generally are not depreciated until completion.

Question 5

What are evaluation groups on the asset master used for?

Answer 5

Allocation (evaluation) groups can be used to categorize assets whichever way the user chooses.

There are 4 with four characters (configured via OAVA transaction) and 1 with 8 characters (configured with OAV8). If you wish, you can define a list of entries to be validated when the user populates these fields

In customizing you can choose which of the 5 fields todisplay on the asset master record

Question 6

What cost objects can be posted to automatically when the Fixed Asset Depreciation run is performed ?

Answer 6

In IMG transaction OAYR you can choose to allocate depreciation cost to :

• Cost centers
• Internal Order
• Both of the above

The cost centers or order used is stored on the respective asset master record

Question 7

Explain the terms smoothing and catchup with regards to fixed asset depreciation

Answer 7

This refers to how SAP handles under/over depreciated assets with respect to future depreciation runs.

In IMG OAYR setting the smoothing flag forces the system to calculate depreciation evenly over the remaining periods in the fiscal year

The opposite of this is catch up. This means the system will correct any under/over depreciation in the next fiscal months’ depreciation run.