If you use Asset Accounting in conjunction with cost accounting and/or FI General Ledger, the following additional account assignments are possible, depending on the business transaction to be posted:

• Business area

• Cost center/Internal order

• Profit center

All changes to asset balance sheet values can also be automatically posted at the business area level. There is one prerequisite, however. You must specify for the company code that business area balance sheets are to be created. The system then determines the business area that is to be posted for each posting. The system makes this determination based on the business area entered in the asset master record, and transfers this information to Financial Accounting for the automatic posting.

You can make account assignment of the following accounting transactions (G/L accounts) to the cost center entered in the asset master record or to the internal order entered in the asset master record:

• Loss due to scrapping

• Gain/loss due to asset retirements

• Clearing/expense from repayment of an investment support measure (as a result of asset retirement)

• Revenue from post-capitalization

• Revenue from write-ups (all depreciation types)

The necessary conditions for this additional account assignment to CO are listed below:

• A cost center or internal order has to be entered in the asset master data of the asset (in the section for "time-dependent data")

When Profit Center Accounting is also active, the system also posts additional account assignment to profit centers. The system determines the profit center to be posted by means of the cost center specified in the asset master record. Further requirements for account assignment to a profit center are outlined below:

• The corresponding accounts (cost elements) in cost center accounting have to be defined using the cost element type "revenue element."

• The cost center in the asset master record must be assigned to a profit center in its own master record.

In addition to the account assignment to the profit center, the system automatically carries out the corresponding statistical posting to the respective cost center. It is not possible to allocate the line items posted to the cost center to other CO objects. This prevents duplicate allocation to the same profit center. However, you can still generate reports on these line items in the same way as on other CO line items.

You can post depreciation and interest to internal orders or cost centers. The posting program posts to the cost center or internal order that is entered in the asset master record. If both an order and a cost center have been entered in the asset master record, the system posts to both. However, it does check whether one of the two account assignments is only statistical.

It is only possible to enter one cost center in the asset master record. The only way to distribute depreciation and interest to different cost centers is to use settlement within cost accounting. The cost center in the asset master record then serves the function of a distribution cost center.

The disadvantage of this approach is that reports show only the distribution cost center, and not the cost centers that are actually debited. Also, you need to enter a separate cost center for the distribution. A different approach is to follow this procedure:

• Determine the cost center that you want to be shown in asset reports as the cost center of the asset. Enter this cost center in the asset master record.

• Enter an internal order in the asset master record. The system posts to this order when it posts depreciation. The system does not post to the cost center.

• Settle the "distribution" internal order to the cost centers that you want to debit.

It is possible to enter an activity type in the asset master record along with the cost center. When an activity type is entered, all debits that have account assignment to the cost center are also posted automatically to the activity type as well. The only prior requirement is that Customizing in the CO component is set up for account assignment of actual postings to activity types.