Setup Considerations: Asset Books

You can use this topic to help make decisions when planning your configuration and use of asset books. It explains:

Why to set them up.

How they fit into the rest of Workday.

Downstream impacts and cross-product interactions.

Security requirements and business process configurations.

Questions and limitations to consider before implementation.

Refer to detailed task instructions for full configuration details.

What They Are

Asset books enable you to track and account for business assets.

Business Benefits

You can set up asset books to automatically assign accounting treatments and depreciation profiles to a business asset, reducing manual data entry.

You can account and report on the same asset in multiple books, enabling you to meet multiple accounting standards.

Use Cases

Your organization needs to meet an accounting guideline or standard. You can set up:

An accounting asset book to track and generate accounting for your business assets.

Multiple nonaccounting books to track your assets for tax purposes.

Questions to Consider

Questions	Considerations
How many asset books do you need to generate accounting for?	For capitalized business assets, depreciation profiles populate from the asset book rules. Assets can have separate depreciation profiles in different books that determine when they're placed in service. An asset can be in service in 1 asset book and not another. When you use multiple books, you must first enable multibook asset accounting. You can't disable multibook asset accounting after you enable it. When you migrate from a single asset book to multiple books, create a manual journal entry to move the opening ledger account balances from the common book code to each adjustment book code.
When do you want to place your assets in service?	You can set up your depreciation profiles to place an asset in service: Manually or when issued. Upon acquisition. The depreciation schedule is based on the date when you place an asset in service.
What roles in your company need access to asset books?	You can assign security roles to domains that provide access to accounting or nonaccounting books, or both. You can also provide roles such as tax managers with access to your tax books.
Can you use an existing asset book to create new asset books?	When you add an asset book to a company with assets, you can copy asset information from the existing book to the new one. The fiscal schedule of the new asset book should have fiscal periods from the earliest to the latest effective date for all cost activities that you copy. The depreciation start date for an asset is the earliest transaction effective date for the asset.

Recommendations

Consolidate asset books across your organization. When you transfer assets between 2 companies, we recommend that both companies have the same asset books.

When you account for assets in multiple books, place them in service at acquisition to maintain the same date across your depreciation profiles.

Requirements

Set up spend categories to classify your business assets. Spend categories drive the accounting that posts the asset to the appropriate ledger account.

Set up asset book rules to determine which accounting treatment and depreciation profile Workday applies to a business asset.

Limitations

Workday doesn't support asset pooling for project assets, or for the business assets you create when you capitalize project transactions.

Tenant Setup

Enable asset accounting for multiple books on the

Edit Tenant Setup - Financials

task and assign book codes to your asset accounting books.

Security

Domains	Considerations
Set Up: Business Asset Accounting in the Business Asset Accounting functional area	Provides access to maintain asset book rules and depreciation profiles.
Set Up: Company Asset Books in the Business Asset Accounting functional area	Provides access to map asset books to companies.
Set Up: Accounting Rules in the Common Financial Management functional area	Provides access to set up account posting rules.
Set Up: Ledger and Book in the Common Financial Management functional area	Provides access to set up book codes and books for asset accounting.
Set Up: Spend Categories in the Common Financial Management functional area	Provides access to maintain spend categories.

Business Processes

No impact.

Reporting

Reports	Considerations
Capital Assets without Accounting Information Assigned	Identify depreciable and nondepreciable capital assets without asset accounting assigned. You have to assign accounting information for Workday to add assets to a company asset book.
View Asset Books	Use to: Access asset book rules. View all asset books. View the companies that use each asset book.
View Company Asset Books	Use to: Add asset books to a company. Update asset books. Set up asset book restrictions.

Integrations

Web Services	Considerations
Get Asset Book Rules	You can use this web service to retrieve asset book rules through the Enterprise Interface Builder (EIB).
Get Asset Depreciation Schedules	You can use this web service to retrieve depreciation schedules through the EIB.
Get Asset Pooling Rules	You can use this web service to retrieve asset pooling rules through the EIB.
Put Asset Book Rules	You can use this web service to update asset book rules through the EIB.
Put Asset Pooling Rule	You can use this web service to update asset pooling rules through the EIB.
Update Asset Book Configuration	You can use this web service to add secondary asset books or update asset book configuration details for assets such as: Depreciation schedule. Cost information by book.
Bulk Import Asset Book Configuration	You can use this web service to add secondary asset books or update asset book configuration details for assets in bulk.

Connections and Touchpoints

Features	Considerations
Account posting rules	You can set up account posting rules to direct where transaction journals post in your company ledger accounts.
Asset pooling rules	You can create rules for assets you pool into 1.
Bonus depreciation rules	You can set up rules to apply bonus depreciation to assets in your nonaccounting asset books.
Company asset book restrictions	You can assign or restrict assets to specific asset books based on: Spend category. Supplier contract type. Lease accounting method.

Workday offers a Touchpoints Kit with resources to help you understand configuration relationships in your tenant. Learn more about the Workday Touchpoints Kit on Workday Community.

Steps: Set Up Asset Accounting for Multiple Books

Steps: Set Up Asset Books for a Company