Guidelines for Creating Group and Member Assets

Keep the following points in mind when creating group and member assets:

Capitalized and CIP assets can be members of a group asset if they belong to the same corporate book.
Carefully evaluate all group asset attributes based on your business requirements before creating group assets. Once you add members to a group, you can't update these attributes.
When you define depreciation rules for a group asset, the group asset rules supersede those of the associated member assets.
When you perform transactions to member assets, such as additions, adjustments, and group reclassifications, these transactions are treated as amortized adjustments to the member assets. Note that you can't perform expensed adjustments to group assets.
When you retire a member asset, it reduces the cost of the group asset and therefore, reduces the accumulated depreciation based on the retirement option you selected.
The application uses the group asset date placed in service to determine when a group asset starts depreciating. You can't update this date once the group asset begins depreciating.
You can add member assets with a date placed in service that's different than that of its group asset, but the date placed in service of the member asset can't be older than the date placed in service of the group asset.
If you add a member asset with a prior period date placed in service, the application treats the member asset addition as an amortized cost adjustment to the group asset from the date placed in service of the member asset.
When you add a CIP member asset to a group asset, the application doesn't add the CIP member asset cost to the group asset until the CIP member asset is capitalized. This rule doesn't apply when you enable the Allow CIP depreciation option on the Create Book page. You can add the CIP member asset cost to the group asset by setting the Depreciate By option to Group method on the Edit Category page.
You can perform unplanned depreciation on member assets only if you specify a Tracking Method on the Create Category or Edit Category page.
The application stores and tracks the cost at the member asset level and summarizes the cost at the group asset level.
The application tracks accumulated depreciation for the group asset only.
After you add a member asset, you run the Create Accounting process with the Post to General Ledger option enabled, and the process posts the member asset cost to General Ledger for the individual member asset. The Group Asset Summary and Group Asset Detail reports display the accumulated depreciation of the member assets at the group level.