Asset accounting and Inventory management.

Question

Hi gurus, I need your advice.
We want to control our inventory and our fixed assets in order to be able to match the amounts between both modules. The main difficulty is that not all the items we register into the inventory module generate a fixed asset (we have sixty thousand inventory items and seven thousand fixed assets).
The way I have thought to solve it is the next: currently we have and asset class per Fixed Asset GL Account. I want to create two asset classes per GL Account, one for the fixed assets that are into the Inventory Module and other for the Fixed Assets that aren´t in the Inventory Module.
Do you think it is ok or do you have a better/easier solution??
Many thanks in advance.
BR//Alberto.

Answer 1

Since you mention there is an inventory module, and there is a fixed assets module - consider that the two are very different. 
Inventory is merchandise for sale.  When its costs are recognized, those costs are recorded as costs of sale or costs of goods sold.  Inventory can be purchased or it can be constructed, but when we sell the items to customers we recognize both the revenue and the costs at the same time.  The gross margin is the net gross profit or loss.  Inventory has no depreciation.
Fixed assets are capital assets used by the organization to do the things the firm is in the business of doing.  The tools used to build/construct inventory are capital assets (used in more than one year).  Fixed assets will not be sold as a main purpose of the organization.  Only inventory is sold as a main purpose of the organization to earn a profit.  Since fixed assets benefit the organization for more than one year, we spread the costs over all those years in which revenue is generated by the fixed asset use.  This is the matching principle to recognize costs when the revenue is recognized.  To achieve this, we use the AFAR and AFAB depreciation process to spread that APC value across all periods that will benefit from the "tools."
I think you are already using MM for your inventory module.  There can be different classes of inventory just as there can be different classes of fixed assets in SAP.  Each class has its own reconciling account.  Each is its own subsidiary ledger/listing of items that sum to the balance in the reconciling account.  Subledger transactions will automatically update the reconciling account balances for the class - whether we are talking fixed assets or inventory.
I hope this can help, since it sounded like the terminology was confusing.  Neither SAP or accounting is simple.  Regards