Understanding the Depreciation Allocation Business Process

PeopleSoft Asset Management enables you to allocate depreciation expenses or asset costs across multiple departments or ChartField combinations. The allocation might be divided equally among all departments or selected ChartField combinations, or it might be calculated on a factor that is appropriate to your business, such as a prorata basis.

In some business environments, allocation of depreciation expenses to departments or ChartField combinations other than those assigned to an asset's cost might be required. For example, depreciation expenses for shared services assets such as HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) for a store in a mall might be needed to allocate the expenses across all departments using the service. The allocation might be spread evenly among all departments, or it might be calculated on a prorata basis based on the square footage of each department or some other factor.

PeopleSoft Asset Management enables you to create and process allocations before posting depreciation to the general ledger. Allocation amounts are derived in PeopleSoft Asset Management from the DIST_LN table, which is populated by accounting entry generation programs such as the Accounting Entry Creation process (AM_AMAEDIST) and the Depreciation Close process (AM_DPCLOSE). The allocation process must be run after running these programs and before journal generation. The allocation program takes unposted journal lines from the DIST_LN table, processes them according to the defined allocation, and creates new allocation entries. Also, lines that have already been sent to the general ledger by previous journal generation are available to allocate.