Prorate and Retirement Conventions

Oracle Assets uses prorate and retirement conventions to determine how much depreciation to take in the first and last year of an asset's life.

To determine depreciation, set up:

• Prorate conventions

• Retirement conventions

Prorate Conventions

Define prorate conventions to determine depreciation in the first and last year of an asset's life, based on when you place the asset in service. Since assets can be acquired at any time in a given period, prorate conventions must account for every date in the fiscal year for assets to depreciate properly. The prorate convention and the date placed in service determine the prorate date. Assets uses the prorate date to determine the prorate period in your prorate calendar.

Note: You must initially set up all your prorate conventions from the convention period corresponding to the oldest date placed in service through the end of the current fiscal year. At the end of each fiscal year, Assets automatically sets up your prorate conventions for the next fiscal year.

Assets prorates the depreciation taken for an asset in its first fiscal year of life according to the prorate date. For example, if you use the half-year prorate convention, the prorate date of all assets using that convention is simply the midpoint of your fiscal year. So assets acquired in the same fiscal year take the same amount (half a year's worth) of depreciation in the first year. If however, you use the following month prorate convention, the prorate date is the beginning of the month following the month placed in service, so the amount of depreciation taken for assets acquired in the same fiscal year varies according to the month they were placed in service.

Your reporting authority's depreciation regulations determine the amount of depreciation to take in the asset's first year of life. For example, some governments require that you prorate depreciation according to the number of months you hold an asset in its first fiscal year of life. In this case, your prorate convention has twelve rate periods, one for each month of the year. Other reporting authorities require that you prorate depreciation according to the number of days that you hold an asset in its first year of life. This means that the fiscal year depreciation amount would vary depending on the day you added the asset. Thus, your prorate convention contains 365 prorate periods, one for each day of the year.

Retirement Conventions

If you do business in a country that requires you to use a different prorate convention for retirements than for additions, set up retirement conventions to determine how much depreciation to take in the last year of life, based on the retirement date.

If you retire the asset before it's fully reserved, then Assets uses the prorate date from the retirement convention to determine how much depreciation to take in the asset's last year of life.