Copying data to a future month

Question

We are currently in the process of upgrading our Planning application to version 11.1.2 but we are not using the Capex module so I need to figure out how to take into account a delayed in service date for a planned capital expense. So if a user enters a capital expense into a form in the month they plan to purchase it but it won't go into service and start depreciating 3 month later, what is the logic to copy that purchase price 3 months in the future into another account so I can start the depreciation. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I have faced this issue before. The problem was that I never really knew what the in-service date for an asset would be (and it could change). In the end, we decided to have users enter the capital asset into the month of the in-service date, and not the acquisition date. We weren't doing any cash-flow calculations based on the acquisition date, so this worked for us.
An alternate (although somewhat complex) solution might be this. Set up 4 smart-lists for the following:
- Acquisition Month (1-12 in the smart list for Jan - Dec)
- Acquisition Year (1-? in the smart list - depends on how many years you have)
- In-Service Month (same as above)
- In-Service Year (same as above)
When users add an asset, they select months and years in the form using the smart lists above.
Then you can base your depreciation start on the in-service month and year, regardless of when the asset was acquired. If the in-service date changes, the business rule automatically adjusts depreciation accordingly. I would imagine there's a big IF statement that says, if my in-service date is X and my in-service year is Y, then start depreciation in month/year Z. I haven't thought it all the way through, but this is where I might start.
I haven't used the CapEx module from Hyperion, however Workforce Planning performs a lot of calculations like this. I suspect CapEx is probably the same.
- Jake