Skip to main content
Documentation
Documentation
Administrator Guide
Last Updated: 2025-02-07
Concept: Strategies for Populating New Company Asset Books on Existing Assets

Concept: Strategies for Populating New Company Asset Books on Existing Assets

When you add new asset books to companies where you already track assets, you can populate the new asset books on existing assets using 1 of these strategies:
  • Migrate assets to the new asset books, which Workday recommends.
  • Add assets to the new books.

Migrating Assets to a New Asset Book

You can migrate existing assets with 1 of these web services:
  • Bulk Import Asset Book Configuration
  • Update Asset Book Configuration
When you migrate assets to a new asset book, Workday loads the assets in the new book with beginning balances. Workday doesn't copy the historical transactions on the assets, eliminating the need for manual adjustments on historical transactions that don't apply to the new book.
With this method, you can specify:
  • The beginning cost balances for the assets in the new book. Examples:
    • Original acquisition cost.
    • Residual value.
    • Fair market value.
  • The depreciation information for the assets in the new book. Examples:
    • Depreciation start date.
    • Remaining useful life.
    • Accumulated depreciation.
    • Year-to-date depreciation.
Workday doesn't create accounting for the beginning cost and accumulated depreciation balances. You can create manual journals to load the beginning cost and accumulated depreciation balances to their respective ledger accounts.
Workday applies the worktags and shares from the latest lifecycle event on an asset to the new book.

Adding Assets to a New Asset Book

You can copy assets to new asset books with the
Add Assets to Company Asset Book
 task. Workday recommends that you only use this strategy to populate new asset books when:
  • You need to produce reports on the historical transactions on assets in the new book.
  • The book you copy assets from is similar to the new book, reducing the need for manual adjustments.
  • The book you copy assets from has the same currency as the new book.
This method might require you to create manual adjustments to reconcile accounting differences between assets in the new book and in the existing book:
  • Cost.
  • Residual value.
  • Accumulated depreciation.
  • Useful life.