The value that appears in the DEPRECIATION THIS RUN column on the Depreciation Expense Report is a common cause for concern among FAS Asset Accounting users. Troubleshooting this report field is a simple matter. All it requires is a basic understanding of what the data in this field truly represents.

The first thing to keep in mind is that this column is, by nature, a volatile one. There is no set interval of time that represents a depreciation run. A company that commonly does their depreciation yearly is going to show a different Depreciation This Run than a company that does depreciation quarterly or monthly, but this still does not guarantee that a run is always going to be that period of time. Fortunately, the Depreciation Expense Report gives you all the data necessary to find out what period of time the Depreciation This Run column is representing.

Depreciation Expense Report:

Above, you can see a sample Depreciation Expense Report. The reported asset has a DEPRECIATION THIS RUN of $25.49. For the purposes of this article, let's assume that Westfields Bakery depreciates their assets on a monthly basis. Looking at this report, we know that FAS Asset Accounting is reporting a monthly depreciation calculation. Why?

There are two dates that are circled on this report. One is the date under the Prior Thru column, and one is the "as of" date at the top of the report. The date displayed in the Prior Thru-column represents the previous time that depreciation was run on the asset. The "as of" date is the date that was entered during your current depreciation calculation. The depreciation calculated in the time between these two dates is your DEPRECIATION THIS RUN.

So, Westfields Bakery is satisfied with their depreciation for January 2008 and decides to book it to their ledger. Some time passes, and after booking their May 2008 depreciation, they realize that they need to reprint that January 2008 report. They depreciate their asset back to January 2008 and draw up their report and see the result below:

Where did that Depreciation This Run of $4519.69 come from? That definitely doesn't match the value of $25.49 on the previous report. Looking at the top of the report, we can see that the "as of" date is correct, but what about the Prior Thru? It no longer says 12/31/2007 like it did in the previous report. In fact, it's blank. What happened?

Westfields Bakery had already depreciated their assets to May when they decided they needed to reprint the January report. They depreciated directly to January. The problem is DEPRECIATION THIS RUN is not a stored field, and they didn't give FAS Asset Accounting a starting point for that depreciation. When you're depreciating forward, the program is always going to have a starting point for the calculation: the previous month's depreciation date.

When you depreciate to a past period, FAS Asset Accounting doesn't have a prior date to pull from. Therefore, it's going to start its calculation from one of the three firm points of data that the program has, each of which is circled on the screenshot below:

Most commonly, this is going to be the Service Date of the asset, which is shown in the second report screenshot. When the program calculates forward from the Service Date, the Prior Thru date is going to be blank. The other two possible starting points are the Beginning Date or the Period Close date. FAS Asset Accounting will start from the most recent of these dates that is available.

So how do we fix this problem? The solution is quite simple. We need to give FAS Asset Accounting an actual starting point for its calculation. Since Westfields Bakery does their depreciation monthly, the starting point we need is going to be December 2007.

Once this depreciation calculation completes, you will be given a report that looks somewhat similar to the problem report we had in January:

Don't worry about this report looking wrong. The data in it is irrelevant to what we're doing. After completing this calculation, FAS Asset Accounting now has a starting point for our January calculation. Let's depreciate to January and see what happens:

As you can see, we once again have a proper interval for our Depreciation This Run. With the Prior Thru reading 12/31/2007, the report shows the value we would expect: $25.49. Problem solved.

Any time you see a value under Depreciation This Run, be it under an active asset or a disposal, the very first thing you should look at is the date in the Prior Thru column. If you depreciate yearly, it should display the end of the previous year. If you depreciate quarterly, it should display the end of the previous quarter. If this date is ever wrong, you know immediately that the program isn't giving you the interval you would expect. Depreciate your assets to the end of the previous period, and then the current period, and the issue will nearly always resolve itself.