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Asset Pooling and Composite Assets

Asset Pooling and Composite Assets

Do you have an excess of similar, low value assets causing your asset count to be unreasonably high and difficult to manage? Well, there is no need for all those assets when you can group them together into one asset using Asset Pooling Rules. A pooled asset is a group of similar tangible items that you register as a single asset in Workday, which allows for the efficient tracking of multiple low value assets. Assets that become part of a pool can come from purchase orders, invoices, receipts, or suppliers. Asset pooling rules determine which assets meet the criteria to be included in the pool. Once a pooled asset is created, it acts as a “regular” asset – following asset book rules and using the account spend posting rules. A pooled asset is then placed in service and depreciated as a single asset.

You can’t talk about asset pooling without mentioning composite assets, which is when separate but related assets are grouped to become a composite asset. There are two type of composite assets –

  • Discrete composite asset- Contains asset components that maintain their own costs, depreciation, and lifecycle events.
  • Nondiscrete composite assets- Contains asset components that maintain the same costs, depreciation, and lifecycle events. Also, each asset that is part of a nondiscrete composite asset exists in reference only.

You can use all or part of a pooled asset as part of a composite asset. When a pooled asset is part of a composite asset, the individual pooled component assets become separate, single assets. Pooled assets then follow the asset lifecycle events dictated by the composite asset. Pooled assets partially used by a nondiscrete composite asset are only available for use by that nondiscrete composite asset (you can’t otherwise place them in service).

For example, a pooled asset with ten computer monitors has four monitors as part of a nondiscrete composite asset. The composite contains the four monitors as individual assets so Workday updates the quantity and cost of the remaining six monitors within the pool.

To set up asset pooling rules, use the task “Maintain Asset Pooling Rules”. Here, you can specify a spend category or item for pooling. Then enter the ‘quantity greater than’ to specify the number of items an order must have to qualify for the asset pool. Next enter ‘unit cost threshold’ where you specify the highest cost value the units must equal to or be less than to have Workday add them to the asset pool. During the Review Trackable Lines for Asset task, you can override the default asset pooling rules or clear the ‘Pooled’ checkbox to create individually registered assets. Then the next time an invoice comes in and meets your newly defined asset pooling rules criteria it will only create one asset!

Author

  • Francesca Moran

    Francesca has a background in Finance and has now been working in the Workday Financials ecosystem for a year. She has worked with a number of clients across different industries and specializes in FDM, business assets, and reporting.