When setting up fixed assets would it be possible to add an option to select a Non-inventory item for Depreciation expense and Disposal loss/gain at this section of the fixed asset set up:
This would improve report functionality in Custom Reports.
I do not understand your request at all, @AJD. The fields of the fixed asset setup and disposal processes you show are for selecting accounts. Non-inventory items are not accounts, so why would you want to allocate either current depreciation expenses or disposal gains/losses to them?
Likewise, non-inventory items are not fixed assets. So your reason for trying to link them somehow is not understood.
This is not related to whether custom reports can be generated, but to fundamental accounting principles. Current depreciation is an expense and needs to be posted to an expense account. Disposal losses are also expenses (or contra revenue), and disposal gains are income (or contra expenses). So they must be posted to income or expense accounts, depending on whether you choose to set up your chart of accounts with ordinary or contra accounts for this purpose.
To be frank @Tut I didn’t expect you to understand but I fully expected the lecture you have given about accounting principles. Another example of you shooting from the hip.
So, to make it simple for you to understand, when a Non-inventory item is selected in a transaction (e.g. purchase invoice, sales invoice, receipt, etc) it selects the account that you have linked to that Non-inventory item. You are correct that Non-inventory items are not accounts but they are a mechanism for selecting an account.
So that I can report using the custom field(s) that I have created for Non-Inventory items. I can use a non-inventory item for other expense items but there is no way to allocate a Non-inventory item to depreciation expense or disposal loss/gain expenses and this leaves gaps in custom report reporting. I can’t circumvent using the inbuilt depreciation entries by using another transaction type as the account for other side of the double entry transaction (i.e. Accum. depreciation) is not selectable in any other transaction type.
I am not asking for a Non-inventory item to be linked to the fixed asset account, but there is no reason why it could not be as it is a chart account just like other chart accounts.
There is no dispute here, the suggestion was that it would improve the functionality of custom reports.
I did not “shoot from the hip,” @AJD. I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out what possible reason you might have for asking for the feature you are requesting. When I could not think of a reason, I asked.
Actually, they are not. They are a shortcut mechanism for entering frequently sold or purchased goods or services so that the revenue or expense of the transaction is posted to a standardized account. Selection of the specific account when a non-inventory item is bought or sold is a secondary characteristic of the transaction. The primary aspect is to record revenue or expense. Therefore, selection of a non-inventory item when defining or disposing a fixed asset is illogical.
That is because there is no accounting relationship between non-inventory items and depreciation expenses or disposal gains/losses.
Yes, you are. You are asking to specify non-inventory items (not the accounts where their sale or purchase might be posted) as the place to post depreciation expenses and disposal gains/losses. You can say what you like, but that is what you have requested.
This is where you are wrong. Non-inventory items are definitely not accounts in the chart of accounts. They are goods or services.
But it won’t, and it can’t, because custom reports are distillations of general ledger transactions. There can be no general ledger transactions involving both fixed assets and non-inventory items.
All this seems unnecessary in the first place, because you can assign depreciation expense and disposal gains/losses of a fixed asset to any ordinary profit statement account. There is simply no need to try to do so by specifying an unrelated non-inventory item as a way to choose the account.
With responses like this, posting on this forum is becoming a waste of time.
I would like you to think on this quote @tut:
“If you are in a room and you think that you are the smartest person in that room, then you are in the wrong room” (substitute “forum” for “room”)