The NetSuite Fixed Asset Module and Shepherd

The majority of Shepherd’s clients have installed and implemented the NetSuite Fixed Asset bundle to manage acquisition, depreciation, and disposal of their assets over time.  This bundle is one of the most installed from the SuiteApp store.  Its design is, of course, financial in nature.  Shepherd’s clients, however, also require maintenance and rental related functionality in order to satisfy all their offset management requirements.  Shepherd has built those functionalities into its asset management product as an overlay onto the Fixed Asset bundle.

Maximising asset use and keeping costs down

Converting an inventory item into an asset for use or for rental is an action some Shepherd clients perform which we call infleeting.  Shepherd allows the client to infleet an inventory item immediately upon receipt or to delay infleeting into the future via inventory adjustment.  The infleeting process moves the value of a crane, for example, from an Inventory Account to a Fixed Asset Account.

The crane ceases its life as an inventory item and begins a new life as a depreciating asset for maintenance as well as for rental.  All asset related data as well as maintenance related data live in NetSuite are assigned to the same database, meaning Shepherd reporting allows for valuable cross referencing of traditional asset information with maintenance data:  rental utilization & performance as a function of actual asset value, asset return on investment that include maintenance costs, etc.

Adapting to business functions, not vice versa

Having infleeted a crane, many Shepherd clients will later find that they wish to defleet it, which brings the asset back into inventory in a flow opposite the one described above.  Several clients, for example, choose to refurbish and then sell their older rental equipment, which is a function best suited to inventory items.  One client even later sometimes refleets defleeted machines multiple times over the course of the machine’s life.  NetSuite nativity makes this possible and elegant.  If you try doing this with integrated software, just make sure that you can spell the word ‘fail’, 😉

Keep on top of regulations and limits

Another function is when clients must capitalize maintenance labor and part costs whose value exceeds a certain legislated threshold or extends the useful life of the machine. Shepherd Analytics allows calculation of all of those costs, which clients may then drive back into the asset value in order to comply with applicable legislation.

Neither infleeting, defleeting, refleeting, or maintenance cost capitalization are difficult processes.  Does your current system do this? If not, find out more about ShepherdCMMS. If you are already a ShepherdCMMS user, please speak to your Shepherd Representative about activating this functionality in your account.