Problem:
In Fixed Assets, need to calculate depreciation from a date prior to the acquisition date posted in Business Central. I didn’t know this was a thing, but I had a customer request it. Came from their auditors.
Solution:
With BC you can acquire an asset and calculate depreciation in BC for periods prior to the acquisition date. To do this, setup a user-defined depreciation method.
In the example below, I created a user defined depreciation table with 84 periods (7 years with monthly depreciation). I acquired my asset in June and calculated depreciation for the first time at the end of June using a depreciation start date of January 1. When working in Depreciation Books you may need to personalize your list page to add First User-Defined Depr. Date and Depreciation Start Date. Neither of these were on my page out-of-the-box.
Summary:
You can calculate depreciation from a date prior to the acquisition date posted for the fixed asset in Business Central. By setting up a User Defined Method, you can post the depreciation beginning in January even though the asset was not acquired until June. The June depreciation entry will catch up the depreciation and months following will calculate as needed on a monthly.
