Bottom line right up front: Yes, PeopleSoft Asset Management (AM) can save your organization money! I recently had the opportunity of implementing PeopleSoft AM v9.2, and have worked with PeopleSoft AM a handful of times over the past 15 years. But this year I’ve really had the pleasure to see how PeopleSoft AM can save organizations big money.
What made a recent implementation unique was that this organization needed to track assets over numerous Tax Books, 12 in all, plus two Corp Books as well. In the past, this organization had tracked Assets for the Corp/FASB Books in their main system whereas all the Tax Books were tracked in a separate system. As part of this implementation, it was my goal to demonstrate that we could consolidate all the Tax Books into PeopleSoft AM and save the organization massive time and money. In their previous system(s), it required extra monthly procedures for interfaces and redundant manual input to keep the Tax Books in sync with the main system for Asset transactions such as “adds”, “adjustments” and “retirements”. By consolidating all the Books into a single system with PeopleSoft AM, all that extra effort to keep everything in sync and the cost of maintaining the separate sub-system can now all go away.
All. Go Away. That’s huge.
What made the system consolidation possible was the flexibility built into PeopleSoft AM. It allowed every Asset Book, including the 12 Tax Books, to have its own set of defaults, and allowed each Asset Book to produce the exact results needed without any extra offline work effort. A main test that we had to pass for the Tax Department was that PeopleSoft AM would calculate depreciation correctly for each and every Tax Book and that it would provide the exact data they needed, which it did. Another benefit was the ability to fully integrate the new Asset Configuration fully upstream with PeopleSoft Purchasing and PeopleSoft Accounts Payable. This put all the Asset Book details in place automatically as soon as the transaction was initiated. No further effort was needed to keep all the Books in synch and this end to end integration further added to the time and cost savings.
Now here is the best part: not only were costs saved but accuracy went up. Way up. Since all the data is now in a single system, all the Tax Books will be kept in sync automatically at any point in time for every asset transaction. This was not the case in the prior system. The time savings and accuracy increase will be especially valuable at year end when the Tax Department is in crunch time — all their Tax Book data will now be in sync and data will all be available real-time. This means no more year end reconciliations, no more catch up depreciation and no more missed assets across the various Books. Reporting is another huge plus here as well. Since all the Asset Book data is now in a single system, reporting will be easier, faster, more accurate and your users will be more self-sufficient.
If your organization is moving to PeopleSoft, considering PeopleSoft or upgrading to a newer PeopleSoft version, and if your organization is tracking Asset Books over multiple sub-systems, now is your chance to leverage the capabilities of PeopleSoft Asset Management and consolidate your Asset Tax Books into a single system and save money. It’s far more impactful than any presentation or datasheet can explain. Contact me with questions.