Understanding Group Asset Processing

PeopleSoft Asset Management is fully equipped to handle group asset processing for organizations such as utility companies or other entities that support a communal infrastructure—such as federal, state, or municipal public utilities, highways, and roads—or other infrastructure that owns, leases, or uses depreciable assets.

Group assets are treated as a single entity for the purpose of depreciation but as multiple entities for all other purposes. These entities may reside in different locations, or they may be in different stages of their service lives. Nevertheless, you consolidate and depreciate their collective cost as if it were that of a single asset.

Some items commonly tracked as group assets include telephone poles, pipelines, and wire. Some of these group assets can be identified by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) code (delivered with the PeopleSoft system) and depreciated according to FERC guidelines. Group assets are added without cost information. The group member assets are added with associated cost information. Asset transactions, except depreciation and accounting entries, are performed on group member assets. After performing transactions against group members and before running depreciation against the group, the Group Asset Consolidation process is run, consolidating group member cost information at the group asset level. Depreciation is then run against the group asset, and the resulting accounting entries are made.

This topic discusses:

• Asset transactions.

• Depreciated group assets.

• Retired group members.

• Strategy for asset grouping.