Understanding What If Depreciation

PeopleSoft Asset Management provides you with the ability to perform what if depreciation simulation modeling and to load the net book value results into a spreadsheet program for analysis.

Using what if depreciation simulation modeling, you can determine, evaluate, and compare the depreciation amounts for assets if you were to change all or some of the depreciation parameters. For example, you may want determine the effect on depreciation if you change the prorate convention from mid-month to mid-quarter, or if you change the depreciation method from straight line to sum of the years digits. You can experiment with depreciation to determine what the effect on depreciation would be without changing the actual depreciation parameters for an asset.

Another useful benefit of the What If Depreciation feature is to project the depreciation if you add an asset and run the actual depreciation program. For example, you can create an asset and run the What If Depreciation program rather than running the actual depreciation program. You can then see what the depreciation amount for the asset would be, go back and modify the depreciation parameters accordingly, and then perform the actual depreciation.

To perform what if depreciation simulation, the assets must already exist in the system. Add at least one asset to perform the simulation. The What If Depreciation feature uses only Add and Transfer In transactions for modeling.