If an Asset was disposed of in the last

1

If an Asset was disposed of in the last financial year and shows as nothing except the asset on the asset report do I just delete it for this year.Will that delete the depreciation out of the comparative year in the P&L report

2

If an asset is disposed off, correct entries must be made to write off the asset’s accumulated depreciation and the asset itself from the books.
Remember to “Receive the money” from the disposal of the asset by debiting Bank/Cash and crediting the asset.
After this the loss or gain on the disposal will automatically be posted to the Profit/Loss account.

The asset will be written off totally.

3

I think @Wornout’s question went a little further, @Abeiku. As I interpret the posting, the asset was disposed of and necessary entries already made. Thus, book value is zero and accumulated depreciation has been removed. But because nothing has been done to the asset itself, it still appears on the Fixed Asset Summary, albeit with no entries. Is that correct @Wornout?

And the question really is whether this asset, which is no longer “on the books” can be deleted from the database without affecting prior year’s depreciation expenses on the P&L.

I think the answer is that you have to leave the asset, because Fixed Assets is a control account, with subaccounts for each asset. Prior depreciation expenses are linked to the subaccounts. I suspect Manager would not let you delete the asset, just as it won’t let you delete a sales invoice if a payment has already been received against it. But I"m not sure, because I’ve never tried to do that.

This is one of the few downsides of Manager being a perpetual system. Fixed assets appear in the Fixed Asset Summary even for dates prior to their acquisition, because Manager establishes an opening balance for each asset on the start date for the business. And the Fixed Assets account will not be accurate unless its entire history remains in the data base.

@lubos, two changes might be in order, if feasible:

  1. Opening balances for fixed assets acquired after the start date of the business should be set as of the acquisition date of the assets themselves.

  2. The Fixed Asset Summary for any period should show only assets that are “on the books” during the specified interval. That is, assets not acquired yet and those disposed of prior to the report interval should not be listed. It seems this should be easily determinable, if not by dates then by the fact that all entries would be zero.

While the current design of the Fixed Asset Summary has no negative consequences from an accounting standpoint, the number of retired assets in it could eventually become very large, filling up the report mostly with zeroes.

4

You are correct Tut and yes I was wondering if it would take it out of the comparative year.
That would be good lubos as I have just disposed of a whole heap of assets and yes it does take up report space.
Trying to explain to a client why they are still there when they have no idea(Which is my my plan to help them understand the reports because so many just go “Oh OK how much Tax do I owe” because they don’t understand the reports) and all they could focus on was the words not the amounts which were all 0.00.