About summarized depreciation postings—Fixed Assets Management

Summarizing depreciation reduces General Ledger volume by grouping depreciation postings across assets that share the same accounting attributes. This helps make depreciation activity easier to review and reconcile.

How it works

When summarization is turned on, Fixed Assets Management groups depreciation postings across assets into a single journal entry if the postings share the following attributes:

  • Journal

  • Actual posting date

  • Accumulated depreciation GL account

  • Depreciation expense GL account

  • Location

If additional depreciation entries are posted later for the same date and meet these criteria, the existing journal entry is updated to include them.

When summarization is turned off, each depreciation entry creates a separate journal entry.

Setup

Summarization must be turned on in Fixed Assets Management configuration before depreciation can be summarized.

You can turn this setting on or off at any time. Changing it only applies to future depreciation postings.

At this time, summarizing depreciation entries is available only for companies with Correction treatment set to Reverse.

Learn how to turn on summarization.

Journal entries for summarized depreciation

When depreciation entries are summarized, Sage Intacct creates one journal entry that reflects the combined depreciation amounts for all included depreciation entries. The journal entry debits the Accumulated depreciation GL account and credits the Depreciation expense GL account. If the depreciation entries have different dimensions, there will be multiple lines within the same summary journal entry.

The journal entry also contains the following information:

  • Description: "Depreciation expense: [Date] summary", where [Date] is the actual posting date

  • Dimensions: All dimensions copied over from the assets included in the summary

The Asset dimension is not included on summarized journal entries since there can be multiple related assets.

Four depreciation entries, each with an amount of 375.00, share the same journal, posting date, accounts, and dimensions. Instead of creating four separate journal entries, Fixed Assets Management summarizes them into one journal entry. Because all dimensions match, the journal entry contains two lines:

GL account Debit (R) Credit (R)
Depreciation expense 1,500.00  
Accumulated depreciation   1,500.00

If some dimensions differ, the depreciation amounts are included in the same journal entry but appear as separate lines. For example, if two depreciation entries are assigned to Engineering and two are assigned to Accounting, the summarized journal entry includes multiple lines:

Department GL account Debit (R) Credit (R)
Engineering Depreciation expense 750.00  
Engineering Accumulated depreciation   750.00
Accounting Depreciation expense 750.00  
Accounting Accumulated depreciation   750.00

Viewing journal entries

To view journal entries related to a depreciation period, select the Journal entries link on any of the following pages:

  • Depreciation Schedule

  • Post Depreciation

  • Bulk Action Run

The link opens a list of all related journal entries, including depreciation expense and reversal entries. Select a transaction number to view the details of a specific journal entry. Select a Base debit or Base credit amount within the journal entry to view the depreciation entries associated with that amount. If the journal entry is a summary, there will be more than one associated depreciation entry.