Consumables for FAs on NAV 5.0

Business Central/NAV Technical Forum
1

Hi,

I wanted to register consumables/spare parts from inventory against Fixed Assets. In other words, those consumable will be buy via POs and added to inventory. When issuing I need to assign against FA#. Later I wanted to see how much those consumables are been consumed by the FAs (to calculate maintenance cost). Are there any way handle this ?

ER

2

Short answer is NO - standard NAV has no mechanism to add Items from Inventory to FA directly.

However, you can add new parts / consumables / repair expenses (in other words, everything that goes under FA Posting Type= Acq.Cost or Maintenance, these two are available to choose) through PO/PI. In this case Inventory will not be hit, all stuff goes directly to FA.

To add from Inventory w/o any customisation, you need:

  1. make negative adjustment to Items, probably using a special Inv.Adjustment GL Account used only for this purpose to ease traceability
  2. “add” those Items to FA through FA GL Journal, using
  • AccType = FA;
  • AccNo = FA N# in question;
  • FA Posting Type = Appreciation, Maintenance, or suggest one of Custom1 or Custom2, that’s up to you to determine;
  • BalAccType = GL
  • BalAccount = that GL account used in p1, where you posted negative inventory adjustment.
  • remember to change the Description from default FA Description to meaningful text describing item / maintenace op.
3

Thanks Lvans. If we go with a customization you have any logic in your mind ? My users are so lazy and for sure they don’t go such long route to achieve the target. Highly appreciated your reply.

4

Such customization is rather complicated, read, COSTLY. I haven’t heard of anyone going for it or even if it was ever done by some Partner.

Many (if not all…) NAV users do some maintenance of their Fixed Assets, but they all go the easy way - by creating POs where line Type = FA, choose FA No as needed and mostly use FA Posting type = Acquisition, because Maintenance in old days was available for addition cost only.

If you want to distinguish repair works, choose Maintenance if your license allows - but every accountant will anyway know that FA value increase AFTER the initial purchase is a repair or upgrade or something of that kind.
I doubt if it is reasonable to spend a heap of $$$$ for customization if the problem can be easily solved in another way.

Another widespread approach is to set a repair parts / works cost threshold under which the amount goes directly to GL expenses account, not adding it to FA value at all.

5

Thanks you so much…