The Sage Fixed Assets team has been busy adding features, improving performance, and updating tax laws to Sage Fixed Assets Depreciation as well as Planning, Tracking, and Reporting. When is the last time you updated your Sage Fixed Assets software? If it has been a while, here are 5 reasons why now is the time to do it.
Tax Updates
As you have come to expect, Sage Fixed Assets keeps you up to date on the latest tax rules and legislation. The Sage Fixed Assets 2021.1 release includes updates for 2020 tax forms, Section 179 and Luxury Vehicle limits for 2021, and the latest depreciation tax extenders from the Consolidated Appropriations Act signed into law Dec. 27, 2020. Additionally, it includes 168 Allowance percent amounts through 2025 to assist in longer-term planning.
20 Books
Have you thought to yourself that the 7 depreciation books work fine, but that 10 would make your work faster and easier? Maybe 20 books would be better due to the complexity of your business.* Sage Fixed Assets gives you the capability to add from one to thirteen books to a new or existing company. For an existing company, go to File > Edit Company > Add Book to add the desired number of books. These extra books would be useful for state tax depreciation, ADS Depreciation, property taxes, keeping historical records on mergers and impairments, budgeting, or for other areas that apply to your situation.
Tip: The Copy Book feature is an easy way to add asset data to your new books. Asset > Copy Book
On the other hand, if you can do everything you need to do with the original 7 depreciation books, nothing has to be changed. Adding books is optional. Each book, except Tax, Internal, and ACE, comes with customizable book titles and any of the books can be left open, temporarily closed, or permanently closed for the ultimate in flexibility.
Reporting Enhancements
Several improvements have been made to specific reports to provide more flexibility or to simplify your work.
The Group Name* has been added to the upper right corner of every page of the Depreciation Expense Report, Disposal Report, Transfer Report, and Fixed Summary Report. This enhancement eliminates the need to go to the last page of one of these reports to see for which group the report was run. Note: The Fixed Summary Report is not available for the Canadian, Government, and Non-Profit organizations.
Other enhancements include re-formatting the Annual Projection Report to display five books at a time to increase readability; using any of the 13 additional books to run the Form 4562 or the FASB 109 Projection report. Finally, under Access Utility Reports, the Company Setup Report has been changed to display one company per page, including information for each of the books up to the maximum of 20.
It’s the Little Things That Count
Not all enhancements fall neatly into a bigger category (e.g. reports) or rise to the level of a new feature (e.g. 20 books); nonetheless, these small improvements make daily work a little easier. Here are some recent enhancements:
Asset Detail: Book width is resizable* and can be reset to the default size with a single click on the Resize Icon. Closed books can be set to display or not display by checking a box in Edit Company.
Book Defaults: Type Z Amortizable property in the Tax book defaults to Depreciation Method “SF” and an Estimated Life of 15 years to align with the IRS safe harbor rules for amortizable assets.*
Book Titles: Book Titles can be up to ten characters.
Custom Import: on the Select Field panel, the book(s) selected in the Choose Books field narrows the options in Field Category to the selected book(s) in Choose Books resulting in a smoother import experience.
Transfer: Automatic final depreciation calculations for assets transferred after a period close. Now you can save time and reduce errors by not having to re-calculate depreciation twice (once for the prior period and again for the current period).*
Enhancements to Other Sage Fixed Assets Products
While the Sage Fixed Assets Depreciation product got the most attention, these three products received customer-requested enhancements.
Sage Fixed Assets Planning: The Project Name field accommodates 32 characters to make it easier to add long names and to distinguish between projects with similar names.*
Sage Fixed Assets Tracking: Improvements in the Mobile App scanner permissions make it more secure and user friendly.*
Sage Fixed Assets – Reporting: You can add the company Employer Identification Number (EIN) to your custom reports.*
Those are the 5 big reasons and many smaller reasons to be on the latest version of Sage Fixed Assets. If you haven’t yet downloaded Tax Update 2021.1 click on Announcing Sage Fixed Assets 2021.1 for more information and how to download.
Note: an asterisk (*) denotes a customer requested enhancement.
Product Notes and References:
- Sage Lite Depreciation, Sage Lite for Sage 50, and Sage 50 Fixed Assets as well as the Canadian, Government, and Non-Profit entities may not have some of the features described in this article.
- For more information on the latest release see Sage Fixed Assets 2021.1 Release Notes
- See also Sage Fixed Assets 2021.0 Release Notes