Setting up a new depreciable asset

Important: this article assumes you own the equipment module in Vista, and that you are setting up an asset that is unrelated to an existing piece of equipment.

In order to set up a new depreciable asset, you must first set up a new piece of equipment. To do this, first, navigate to Equipment > EM Equipment.

Next, create a new piece of equipment. Silvertrek recommends that you follow a standard convention of equipment numbering within your company.

Fill in all the required fields and as much other information as you have.

Next, on the Depreciation tab, double-click anywhere in the grid:

This will open the EM Asset Setup window. Now you can create an Asset associated with the Equipment you created earlier. Silvertrek recommends that you use the same number for the asset as you do for the piece of equipment. If you have multiple assets for a single piece of equipment, you can increment them using a "-n." In our example below, that would be using 1234-1 and 1234-2.

Switch to the Schedule tab, and click the Calculate button. The system will use the (Purchase Price - Residual Value) / # of Months Held and calculate the monthly depreciation to take.

The final step will be to book the Asset to your balance sheet via a journal entry. Note that creating the Equipment and Asset in the EM system does not automatically create the journal entry for you.