28 Mar

How Sage Fixed Asset Software Helps the Planning Process

Sage Fixed Assets software can help businesses maximize their planning processes. Projects that involve renovations to warehouses, manufacturing plants, and office buildings; machinery upgrades; additional vehicles added to your fleet; and other new projects that are part of your annual plan must be tracked to ensure that every dollar spent is spent wisely and well.

As you embark on these projects, Sage software offers easy to use and reliable tools to track budgets, expenses, and planning. Tracking fixed assets, managing project plans, and handling budgets manually, using spreadsheets, can be cumbersome. It’s difficult to manage multiple spreadsheets and getting them to work well together to derive the “big picture” plan is an almost impossible task.

Sage software makes it easy. Sage Fixed Asset Software (FAS) can help you plan, manage, and account for every item in your fixed asset list as you forge ahead with your projects. It’s a great tool that integrates with existing Sage products, such as Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage 300) or Sage EM (formerly known as Sage X3), for a robust software infrastructure to manage new company projects.

Sage Fixed Asset Software Includes Tools for Planning Projects

Sage Fixed Asset Software enables planning with multiple levels of detail tracking. This includes over 45 user-defined fields. Numerous built-in reports make it easy to use right out of the box.

Manage both capitalized and expensed assets at a glance. Key assets are also front and center, so you can quickly view and assess important assets.

Among the many benefits of Sage FAS are the ability to:

• View project status at a glance.
• Track project details, including status, contacts, notes, and all the financials.
• Import invoices and other purchasing information from your Accounts Payable system.
• Create a new fixed asset upon project completion.
• Track the new asset depreciation automatically.

2018 Sage Fixed Assets Improvements

The new 2018 release of Sage Fixed Assets offers outstanding features that make it a great asset for tracking product for small to mid-sized businesses. Among the new features in the 2018 release, users will find the following:

• Enhancements to the Custom Depreciation Method Confirmation.
• Improvements to the Book Information section of the Asset Detail window. This now includes lines from Prior Through date and Depreciation This Run.
• Ability to customize the Asset List view so you can see exactly what you need.

Additionally, the 2018 version fixes several items reported by customers as being incomplete or needed for their businesses These include:

• An alternative accounting period calendar that can be customized to your company’s fiscal year.
• Asset history tracking has been fixed. There was a bug that has been corrected.
• The CCH Prosystem fx integration no longer displays “error on Line 19 total”.
• Known Crystal Reports errors have been fixed.

Using Sage Fixed Assets Software Effectively

As you begin to explore the world within Sage Fixed Assets, here are a few tips that can make the software even more useful to you. You can find more in the white paper from Sage entitled Best Practices for Fixed Asset Managers.

Begin fixed asset tracking by establishing a sound baseline. Once you know what fixed assets you have, you can eliminate “ghost assets” or lost, stolen, or otherwise missing property from your system. According to the paper cited above, repeated audits of companies who track their fixed assets find that as high as 65% have “ghost assets” on the books. Because fixed assets are such a large part of the balance sheet, by eliminating ghost assets, you benefit from the cost savings in taxes.

• Conduct physical asset inventories Even if you think you know what your company’s physical assets are, you may be surprised at what you’ve obtained or sold over the past year. Take regular inventory of fixed assets to keep the records updated.
• Tag assets with the appropriate labels. Make sure you use the best barcode labels for each fixed asset. Foil, tamper resistant, vinyl, or office labels can each be used for an asset but the right label on an asset helps you keep track of them longer. Equipment that is subjected to fluctuating temperatures, rain or snow, or other weather conditions needs a more durable label than a copy machine inside an office building.

These and other tips for fixed asset tracking may be found in the Sage Best Practices for Fixed Asset Managers paper.

Take Control of Fixed Assets Now

Fixed assets can be a big item on the balance sheet for many manufacturers. Take control of them now with the right planning tools. Sage Fixed Assets 2018 offers manufacturers the control, flexibility, and options they need for accurate and easy fixed asset planning.

IWI Consulting Group helps Canadian businesses and non-profits choose and adapt the best enterprise resource planning (ERP) software for their needs. Small to mid-sized companies will find the help and resources they need to choose the right software at the right value. For more information, visit IWI Consulting Group or call 1-866-916-3851