Handling Customer-Owned Assets for Maintenance Without Accounting Impact

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1

Hi everyone! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
I’m looking for best practices on how to handle third-party assets/equipment (e.g., customer equipment received for maintenance or loaned items) without impacting our company’s General Ledger.

The standard Asset module seems too strictly tied to accounting, CWIP, and depreciation. On the other hand, the Customer Provided Item feature works great for raw materials (zero valuation in stock), but I need to track unique serialized equipment, its location, and maintenance history.

How do you guys usually handle this scenario?
Do you create a Custom DocType (e.g., ‘Customer Asset’) to keep it completely isolated from the accounting engine, or is there a native way to configure standard Assets to bypass the GL entirely?
Or, if not possible to bypass the GL, creating separated accounts in the Chart of Accounts for these items/fixed assets is enough?

Any insights would be appreciated. Thank you :folded_hands: !

2

Hi @flaviacastro

Since you do not own the asset, what would you like to do with the following;

• Depreciation
• Capitalization
• R&M Expenses Recoding

that is then can help;

3

It sounds like you need a custom docType(s).

It sounds similar to an Auto Repair facility, where a customer vehicle may spend several days or more in the repair facility. It could even go from Internal Body Shop, to Internal Mechanic Shop, to External Glass Shop, and back to Internal Body Shop. This would involve creating a custom Repair Order DocType or modifying the Project DocType to meet the needs.

When possible, it’s often considered best practice to use the included DocTypes and ‘bending’ or customizing to your needs. Often, it’s not practical to meet the user’s needs without a custom app and custom docTypes.

4

Thank you guys for taking the time to help me. After reviewing the code (still did not reviewed the AccountsController and TransactionBase classes, though) and conducting some tests, I’ve found that while setting the Asset Owner to ‘Customer’ or ‘Supplier’ doesn’t fully isolate asset accounting, the system bypasses the General Ledger (GL) under specific conditions. If the Asset Category is set as a Non-Depreciable Category and the Asset is not booked, no GL entries are generated provided that:

  • Calculate Depreciation is unchecked;

  • There are no linked Purchase Invoices or Receipts;

  • Is Composite Asset is unchecked;

  • Is Existing Asset is checked;

In this scenario, nothing appears in Financial Reports. It seems that as long as the Asset is created strictly for tracking and informational purposes, it passes through validations without triggering any accounting integration. Also, it was possible to create an Asset from an Item with Is Customer Provided Item enabled, so I guess we’ll be safe that way.