Red Moon Solutions LLC — Fixed Assets Manager

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From the Dec. 2008 Review of Fixed Asset Systems

Fixed Assets Manager provides a comprehensive asset tracking and depreciation system that offers complete financial and tax reporting for corporate users, with the ability to manage any number of companies and subsidiary units with large and dispersed asset inventories. The program is scalable to smaller enterprises, allowing them to grow toward virtually any size and keep the same asset management system, but is ideally geared toward in-house use by mid-sized and larger entities with more complex asset management considerations and compliance requirements. The system supports all depreciation methods and conventions, provides extensive diagnostic reporting, and integrates with most business ERP and financial systems. Red Moon Solutions offers Fixed Assets Manager in several configurations, with a basic, stand-alone system starting at about $1,000, with support for up to 30,000 assets. Network-ready and hosted versions are also available to support larger asset volumes, including one that fully integrates with the SAP Business One platform.

NAVIGATION/EASE-OF-USE - 4.5 Stars
Fixed Assets Manager provides several wizards that guide users through installation and initial setup of company data files, depreciation methods and other details, with data-entry screens providing intuitive navigation, and many entry fields utilizing selection lists. The program opens to a very comfortable interface that strongly resembles a Microsoft program, with an Explorer-style menu on the left providing expandable access to asset types, accounting information, consolidated holdings and individual companies, with further expansion directly into asset lists and books. The main work window displays the options available in the drilldown menu, while pull-down menus and an Excel-reminiscent icon toolbar across the top of the screen provides additional access to system functions.

The primary asset selection list offers an extensive array of data columns, from cost and type, to class, acquisition date and other information, and can be filtered, searched or sorted virtually any number of ways. During asset setup, users can duplicate items or create templates. Detailed asset information screens offer superb organization, defaulting to the Book tab that shows side-by-side views of all books, along with all pertinent asset information such as method, convention, life, remaining life, cost, basis, prior depreciation, adjustments, bonus depreciation and much more. Additional tabs allow the user to drilldown into more specific data, such as periods, accounting information, transactions, advanced information and an attachments screen, which allows for the electronic storage of images or documents with asset records. Fixed Assets Manager also allows an unlimited number of user-defined information fields that can be used to track miscellaneous asset data.

MANAGEMENT FEATURES - 5 Stars
Fixed Assets Manager supports traditional IRS, GAAP and FASB depreciation methods and conventions, including ACRS, MACRS, straight-line, sum-of-the-year’s digits, amortization and declining balance. The program also offers the ability to perform calculations for short and partial years and mid-quarter conventions. Users can also set up monthly, quarterly, annual, daily or custom depreciation periods for 52/53 week years. Period data can be exported into financial systems. Four books are automatically set up (Federal, AMT, ACE and Accounting), plus an unlimited number of custom books can be added and tracked, with all calculations occurring in real time and with conventions and methods automatically applied. All asset life events can be easily managed through the system, including combination splits and mass and partial disposals. Assets can be transferred between companies or units.

Fixed Assets Manager provides extensive asset search functions that go well beyond traditional sorting, filtering and basic queries on an asset list. The program’s search system allows users to search across the entire asset base, looking for information in specific fields using almost any type of criteria. Searches can be saved for future use, and reporting options can be applied, if desired, to only those assets that were returned on a given search. The built-in document storage capabilities of the program allow virtually any type of file to be attached to an asset’s records, including images, invoices, maintenance records, spreadsheets and other documents, providing for more accurate tracking of asset issues. Fixed Assets Manager also provides a Notes section that allows documentation of important issues. The program provides an audit trail that tracks changes made throughout the system, and offers role-based security options. A Canadian tax module is also available out of the box.

INTEGRATION - 5 Stars
Fixed Assets Manager offers extensive integration capabilities with ERP-level financial systems, as well as with smaller business suites through the ability to export data into common formats such as Excel, Access, CSV and text. It includes a dedicated GL export utility, and can import asset data from most other systems. FAM also provides certified integrations with the Vertex Income Tax system and SAP Business One.

REPORTING - 5 Stars
Fixed Assets Manager includes more than 40 Crystal Reports-based pre-defined reports that include various options for acquisitions, dispositions, adjusted basis, net book value and reconciliation, as well as depreciation projections and planning. It also produces fileable IRS tax forms 4562, 4684, 4797 and 6252. The system has a built-in custom report writer that enables further customization of output, as well. The company also offers an add-on module called PowerOLAP that allows greater and more detailed control over data, along with additional modeling, calculations and analysis. The module can integrate with other firm applications, including any relational database or compliance tool, resulting in essentially unlimited ad hoc reporting and analysis, and can be used to support other provision and tax lifecycle processes.