Best Practice for Acquisition of Utility Plant Assets from another utility

Question

My company is located in the United States and will be taking on an initiative of purchasing the Utility Plant assets from another company.  We are governed by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Accounting Standards.  In the guidance for the accounting where one utility purchases the assets of another utility, it states that the purchasing company must account for the Utility Plant Assets in FERC Account 102 at a net book value until FERC approval is received on the sale of the other utility.  Depreciation must be calculated based on the Gross Book Value and applied to this same FERC Account.  What must happen in order to track the assets is that the asset's APC Value and the Depreciation Value must transfer from the utility selling the Plant Assets balance sheet to the utility purchasing the Plant Assets balance sheet respectively.
As an example:
Utility ABC is selling their plant assets to Utility XYZ.  The NBV of the plant assets is $60,000,000.  It is broken down to Debit $80,000,000 for the APC Value (in FERC account 101 on Utility ABC's balance sheet) and credit $20,000,000 associated to Depreciation Value (in FERC account 108 on Utility ABC's balance sheet).  When the sale is pending FERC approval the NBV is accounted for on Utility XYZ's balance sheet in FERC account 102.  This amount will be processed to the selling Utility on a PO for the purchase.
I have configured the Fixed Asset module of SAP to account for the APC Value and the Depreciation Value in separate sub accounts of FERC account 102, that are se-up as reconciliation accounts on the G/L, in the account assignment of the respective asset classes.  we track our assets based on asset class that pertain to the FERC Primary Plant Accounts.
I am trying to load the assets to the Fixed Asset module having the APC Value and the Depreciation Value reported respectively.  If the NBV amount is processed on the PO, what would be the best practice to load the  APC Value and Depreciation Value to the respective assets?
My first thought would be to process the PO for the NBV of the assets against a generic FERC Account 102, that is not set-up as a reconciliation account.  I would then process an asset transaction using t-code ABSO with transaction type 158 and use the generic FERC account 102 as the Offsetting Account in the entry and using Document Type AA.
I would like to follow best practice in this scenario.
You help on this subject would be greatly appreciated.
Wayne
Edited by: Wayne Rochon on Mar 31, 2011 9:19 PM

Answer 1

Thank you very much for your response. 
I hope I can provide some clarity on how the accounting needs to be handle per FERC  Regulations.  The G/L balance on the utility that is selling the assets will be in the following accounts (standard accounts across all FERC Regulated Utilities):
101 - Acquisition Value for the assets
108 - Accumulated Depreciation Value for the assets
For an example, there is Debit $60,000,000 in FERC Account 101 and a credit $30,000,000 in FERC Account 108.  When the purchase occurs, the net book value for the asset will be on our G/L in FERC Account 102.  Once we have FERC Approval to acquire the plant assets, we will need to enter the Acquisition Value and associated Accumulated Depreciation onto our G/L to FERC Account 101 and FERC Account 108 respectively with an offset to FERC Account 102.
The method that I came up with is to purchase the NBV of the assets to a clearing account.  I then set up account assignments that will track the Acquisition Value and respective Accumulated Depreciation for each asset that is being purchased.  I load the respective asset values using t-code AS91 and then make an entry to the 2 respective accounts with the offset against the clearing account using t-code OASV.  Once my company receives FERC approval, I will transfer the asset to new assets that has the account assignments for FERC Account 101 and FERC Account 108 using t-code ABUMN or FB01.