NetSuite Training · Fixed Assets Management · Module 3 of 6
FAM Core: Assets, Types & Acquisition
This module teaches you the heart of your job: how assets are structured in NetSuite, how Asset Types configure them automatically, and the two ways assets enter the register — the proposal pipeline and manual creation. Every example uses this company's live configuration.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this module you will be able to:
- Explain the FAM data model — how Asset Types, Depreciation Methods, and FAM Asset records relate, and which GL accounts each Asset Type drives.
- Name this company's 6 Asset Types and their default accounts, methods, and lifetimes without looking them up.
- Run the Asset Proposal process end-to-end: scan vendor bills, review proposals, generate assets, and reject bad proposals.
- Create a manual asset correctly, choosing the right type, depreciation start date, and dimensions.
- Read an asset record fluently: distinguish original cost, current cost, and net book value, and know where each lives.
- Attach supporting documents to an asset record.
Scoped to Your Permissions
Everything taught here is within your role's access: Full on FAM Asset, Asset Proposal, Asset Type, and Depreciation Method records; View on vendor bills (you read them, A/P owns them); Create on Documents & Files. Nothing in this module requires permissions you don't have.
3.1The FAM Data Model
FAM lives inside NetSuite as a family of custom records installed by the Fixed Assets Management SuiteApp. Three of them do most of the work:
The three-layer hierarchy
- Depreciation Method — a formula for spreading cost over time. This account has 44 methods installed, but only one matters day-to-day: Straight Line (internal id 3), which every Asset Type here uses. The rest (declining-balance series, sum-of-years, Japan methods) exist for future or tax use.
- Asset Type — a template. It bundles the GL accounts, the default method, the default lifetime, and the residual value so that assets of the same kind are always configured identically. Get the Asset Type right and 80% of the asset configures itself.
- FAM Asset — the asset itself: one record per physical (or intangible) asset, carrying its cost, dates, status, dimensions, and a link back to the purchase transaction.
Your company's Asset Types — memorize this table
| Asset Type | Asset Acct | Accum. Depr. | Depr. Expense | Method | Lifetime |
|---|
| Machinery & Equipment | 1610 | 1710 | 6810 | Straight Line | 36 mo |
| Furnitures & Fixtures | 1620 | 1720 | 6820 | Straight Line | 60 mo |
| Automotive Equipment | 1630 | 1730 | 6830 | Straight Line | 36 mo |
| Building | 1660 | 1760 | 6860 | Straight Line | 480 mo |
| Leasehold Equipment – Operating | 1670 | 1770 | 6870 | Straight Line | 36 mo |
| Leased Automobile – Finance Lease | not set | — | — | Straight Line | 36 mo |
All six types use 0% residual value and have depreciation active. Notice the tidy account-number pattern: asset cost accounts are 16xx, accumulated depreciation 17xx, depreciation expense 68xx — the middle digits match across the rows.
Insight — Read the Configuration Critically
Two things a sharp new hire should notice: (1) each type's write-off, write-down, and disposal accounts all default to the same depreciation-expense account (e.g., M&E uses 6810 for everything). That's a simplification, not a law of nature — if accounting ever wants disposals in a distinct gain/loss account, that's an Asset Type edit. (2) The "Leased Automobile – Finance Lease" type has no asset account configured — an asset created under it cannot post correctly. Treat that type as unusable until an administrator completes it. Spotting gaps like these is part of your job.
Walkthrough: explore an Asset Type
- Go to Fixed Assets > Setup > Asset Types (or Global Search:
page: asset types).
- Open Machinery & Equipment. Find the fields you just memorized: Asset Account (1610), Depreciation Account (1710), Depreciation Charge Account (6810), Depreciation Method (Straight Line), Asset Lifetime (36), Residual Value Percentage (0), Depreciation Active (checked).
- Note the Depreciation Rules section — conventions like whether the acquisition month gets a full charge. Read them; ask your mentor what convention this company follows before Module 4.
- Open Building and compare — same shape, but a 480-month (40-year) lifetime. The template pattern should now be obvious.
3.2Anatomy of a FAM Asset Record
Open a live one as you read: Fixed Assets > Lists > Assets → FAM000001 "Dell Laptop". This is a real asset in this account — a $2,000 laptop, Machinery & Equipment, currently depreciating.
Fields that matter, in reading order
| Field | On FAM000001 | What It Means |
|---|
| Asset Number / Name | FAM000001 · Dell Laptop | Auto-numbered identity. Name should describe the physical asset. |
| Asset Type | Machinery & Equipment | Drives accounts, method, lifetime. Chosen at creation — changing it later is an escalation, not a casual edit. |
| Asset Original Cost | $2,000.00 | Capitalized cost at acquisition. Should tie to the source bill line. |
| Asset Current Cost | $2,000.00 | Cost after any revaluations or write-downs. Starts equal to original. |
| Residual Value | $0.00 | Expected salvage value; subtracted before spreading depreciation. |
| Depreciation Method / Lifetime | Straight Line · 36 mo | Inherited from the type; editable per-asset when justified. |
| Depreciation Start Date | 5/1/2026 | The most-fumbled field. When depreciation begins — usually the in-service date, not the purchase date. |
| Asset Status | Depreciating | New → Depreciating → Fully Depreciated → Disposed. Status controls which lifecycle actions are allowed. |
| Subsidiary / Dept / Class / Location | Subsidiary 1 | Dimensions stamped on every JE this asset generates. All four current assets sit in Subsidiary 1. |
| Purchase Order / Source | Bill 31726 | Link back to the originating transaction — your audit thread. |
Where net book value actually lives
NBV (cost minus accumulated depreciation) is not a simple field on the asset form — FAM maintains it on a companion Asset Values record per accounting book, shown on the asset's Values subtab. Right now FAM000001 shows NBV $1,888.88: two monthly straight-line charges of $55.56 ($2,000 ÷ 36) have posted, through 6/30/2026. Its sibling FAM000002 "Dell OLED Monitor" ($1,300) stands at NBV $1,227.78.
Quirk — Placeholder Dates on New Assets
Assets that haven't depreciated yet (like FAM000003 "Swivel Mid Back Chair", status New) may show a placeholder date such as 10/1/1981 in the last-depreciation or target fields. That's FAM's "not yet" sentinel, not corrupt data. Don't panic and don't "fix" it.
3.3The Asset Proposal Pipeline
Most assets should enter FAM through proposals, not manual creation. The proposal process scans posted vendor-bill lines that hit fixed-asset GL accounts (1610, 1620, 1630, 1660, 1670…) and queues a draft asset for each — you review, correct, and generate. This preserves the audit thread from bill → proposal → asset automatically.
How a bill becomes a proposal
When A/P codes a bill line to account 1610 Machinery & Equipment instead of an expense account, they're saying "this purchase is capital." Your role can view that bill but not change it — the boundary from Module 2. In this account the pattern looks like the real bill #31726 (Crown Equipment Corporation, 5/1/2026): two lines to 1610 for $2,000 and $1,300, which became assets FAM000001 and FAM000002 via proposals that are now status Created.
Walkthrough: run and review proposals
- Go to Fixed Assets > Transactions > Asset Proposal.
- Set Asset Type(s) to the types you expect (or all), choose the Subsidiary (this account: usually Subsidiary 1), and click Propose New Assets.
- The scan runs as a background process. Watch it at Fixed Assets > Background Processing > Process Status until Completed — you learned this pattern's importance in Module 2; it returns in force in Module 4.
- Review results at Fixed Assets > Transactions > Asset Proposal > Proposed Assets (or the Asset Proposals list). Each proposal shows the source transaction, amount, and proposed type.
- For each proposal, decide one of three things:
- Generate — details are right (or you've corrected them): check the line and click Generate Assets. FAM creates the asset record, status New.
- Correct first — open the proposal and fix the name, type, or dates before generating. A bill line's description is rarely a good asset name.
- Reject — the line isn't really a discrete asset (freight, a repair miscoded to 1610, a partial line A/P will rebill). Rejection removes it from the queue; the GL coding question goes back to A/P.
Live in This Account Right Now
The proposal queue currently holds a real, unprocessed item: Proposal #4 "Dell Laptop" — $2,000, status New, from bill #31734 (Crown Equipment, 7/1/2026). Its sibling from the same bill, proposal #5 "Dell OLED Monitor" ($1,300), was Rejected — open both and compare. One decision path ends in an asset; the other ends in a documented "no." This pair is your Lab A material.
What "Generate" actually creates
A generated asset arrives with status New, cost from the bill line, type from the proposal, and the source-transaction link populated. It does not start depreciating until the depreciation process (Module 4) picks it up based on its depreciation start date. Your post-generation checklist:
- Rename it if the bill-line text is cryptic — "Dell Laptop — Finance Team, S/N ABC123" beats "Laptop".
- Verify depreciation start date = in-service date. FAM defaults it from the transaction date, which is often right but not always.
- Confirm subsidiary, department, class, location.
- Attach the supporting document (Lesson 3.5).
3.4Manual Asset Creation
Some assets never come through a bill: legacy assets loaded at go-live, donated or found assets, constructed assets capitalized by journal entry. For these you create the FAM Asset record directly.
Walkthrough: create an asset from scratch
- Go to Fixed Assets > Lists > Assets > New.
- Name it descriptively; leave the asset number to auto-generate (next in the FAM00000n sequence).
- Select the Asset Type — watch method (Straight Line), lifetime, and accounts populate from the template. Override only with a documented reason.
- Enter Asset Original Cost. For a manual asset this must be defensible: the JE that capitalized it, an appraisal, or the legacy register value.
- Set Purchase Date and Depreciation Start Date. For a legacy asset already partly depreciated, your mentor will show you the cost/accumulated-depreciation split convention — don't improvise it.
- Set Subsidiary (required in this OneWorld account), plus Department / Class / Location per the asset's real home.
- Confirm Residual Value ($0 is the house default) and that Depreciation Active is checked. Save. The asset is created with status New.
Risk — Manual Assets Have No Automatic GL Backing
A proposal-generated asset is born tied to a posted bill — the GL already carries its cost. A manual asset record, by itself, changes nothing in the GL: the cost must already exist in a 16xx account (via JE or migration) or FAM's subledger and the GL will disagree at reconciliation. Rule: every manual asset needs a mentor-approved answer to "where is this cost in the GL?" before you save it.
3.5Attaching Supporting Documents
Your role has Create access to Documents & Files precisely for this. An asset without its invoice, warranty, or photo attached is an audit finding waiting to happen.
- Open the asset record and go to the Communication (or Files) subtab.
- Click New File, upload the PDF/photo, and file it in the folder your team uses for asset documentation (ask your mentor for the house convention).
- Name files consistently:
FAM000003_invoice_2026-06.pdf beats scan(4).pdf. Future-you, during an audit, will be grateful.
Hands-On Labs
Do these in sandbox. Lab A uses data that mirrors real records in production — in sandbox you can safely process them.
⚡ Lab A — Process the Proposal Queue
Scenario: Bill #31734 from Crown Equipment Corporation (7/1/2026, $3,300 total) posted two lines to account 1610: $2,000 and $1,300. The proposal scan has queued them.
- Open bill #31734 (view-only) and read both lines. Confirm each hit account 1610 Machinery & Equipment.
- Open proposal #4 ("Dell Laptop", $2,000, status New). Verify type = Machinery & Equipment, amount ties to the bill line.
- Improve the asset name (add owner/serial), confirm the depreciation start date is the in-service date, then Generate the asset.
- Open the generated asset. Trace the source-transaction link back to bill #31734.
- Examine rejected proposal #5 ("Dell OLED Monitor"). Discuss with your mentor: why might a monitor be rejected here? (Hint: capitalization thresholds — is a $1,300 monitor an asset or an expense under house policy? If it's an expense, what should A/P have coded instead of 1610, and who tells them?)
Expected Result
A new asset numbered FAM000005 (or next in sequence), status
New, cost
$2,000, type Machinery & Equipment, method Straight Line, lifetime 36 months, Subsidiary 1, source link to bill #31734. Proposal #4 flips to status
Created. No journal entry is generated — the cost already sits in 1610 from the bill.
⚡ Lab B — Manual Legacy Asset
Scenario: A conference-room table bought two years ago (before FAM was used) needs to be added to the register. Agreed cost $1,500, in service 6/1/2026 for simplicity of the exercise.
- Create a new asset: name "Conference Table — HQ (Lab B)", type Furnitures & Fixtures.
- Verify the template pulled: account 1620, accum. depr. 1720, expense 6820, Straight Line, 60 months, 0% residual.
- Cost $1,500; purchase date and depreciation start date 6/1/2026; Subsidiary 1; a sensible department and location.
- Save, then compute by hand what one month of depreciation will be when Module 4's process runs. Write it down — you'll verify it next week.
- Compare your asset side-by-side with the real FAM000003 "Swivel Mid Back Chair" ($1,500, F&F, status New) — they should look nearly identical. Note the placeholder 1981 dates on the not-yet-depreciated fields.
Expected Result
Asset saved with status
New; monthly straight-line charge when depreciation runs = $1,500 ÷ 60 =
$25.00. And an answer ready for your mentor: where is this $1,500 in the GL, and does it need a capitalization JE? (In sandbox: it doesn't exist yet — which is exactly the point of the question.)
⚡ Lab C — Asset Register Search
Scenario: Your mentor asks: "What's on the register right now, by type and status?"
- Go to Fixed Assets > Lists > Assets and use list filters — or build a saved search on the FAM Asset record — grouping by Asset Type and Asset Status.
- Export to CSV.
- Sanity-check against what you now know: before your labs, production holds exactly 4 assets — 2 Machinery & Equipment (Depreciating: the Dell Laptop and OLED Monitor) and 2 Furnitures & Fixtures (New), all in Subsidiary 1, costs between $1,300 and $2,000.
Expected Result
A CSV listing every asset with type, status, cost, and NBV — and the habit of always knowing the size and shape of your register. At this company's current scale you can eyeball it; the discipline matters because registers grow.
Troubleshooting & Gotchas
| Symptom | Likely Cause | What To Do |
|---|
| Proposal scan finds nothing | No new bill lines hit a fixed-asset account since the last scan; or wrong subsidiary/type filter on the proposal form. | Check the bill actually posted to 1610–1670 (view it); widen the proposal filters; confirm the background process completed rather than failed. |
| Proposal shows the wrong amount or should be two assets | A/P coded multiple physical assets on one bill line. | Don't generate. Ask A/P to split the line, or generate and then use the asset split function (Module 5) per house policy. |
| Generated asset never starts depreciating | Depreciation start date in the future, Depreciation Active unchecked, or type's depreciation rules exclude it. | Open the asset: check start date, active flag, method, lifetime. Covered fully in Module 4. |
| Background process stuck >15 min "In Progress" | Queue congestion or a genuine failure. | Read the process log at Fixed Assets > Background Processing; if it shows errors you can't parse, screenshot and escalate to the administrator. |
| Weird 1981 dates on a New asset | FAM placeholder for "hasn't depreciated yet". | Nothing — expected behavior. See Lesson 3.2. |
| Asset needs the "Leased Automobile – Finance Lease" type | That type is incompletely configured (no asset account). | Stop; escalate to the administrator to finish the type before any asset uses it. |
| You spot a wrong GL account on a posted bill | A/P miscoding. | You have view-only on bills by design — route the correction to A/P; reject the proposal if one was created. |
Knowledge Check
- A bill line posts $4,800 to account 1620. Which Asset Type will the proposal suggest, and what will the monthly straight-line depreciation be once it runs?
- What's the difference between Asset Original Cost, Asset Current Cost, and Net Book Value — and where do you find NBV on the record?
- Why does generating an asset from a proposal create no journal entry, while a manual legacy asset raises a GL question you must answer before saving?
- Proposal #5 (the $1,300 monitor) was rejected. Give two legitimate business reasons a proposal from a real bill line might be rejected, and state what must happen in the GL afterward.
- You need to record a delivery van. Which Asset Type, which accounts will its depreciation JE hit, and over how many months?
- Your new asset shows "10/1/1981" in a date field. What does it mean?
- True or false: since your role has Full access to Asset Types, it's fine to quietly fix the missing asset account on "Leased Automobile – Finance Lease" yourself.
Answer Key (mentor copy — expand)
- Furnitures & Fixtures (1620 is its asset account); 60-month lifetime → $4,800 ÷ 60 = $80.00/month.
- Original cost = capitalized cost at acquisition; current cost = cost after revaluations/write-downs; NBV = current cost minus accumulated depreciation, maintained on the Asset Values companion record (Values subtab), not as a plain body field.
- A proposal's cost already posted to the GL via the vendor bill (debit 1610 etc.) — the asset record just mirrors it in the subledger. A manual asset has no automatic GL counterpart, so the cost must already exist in a 16xx account or be capitalized by JE, or FAM and GL will diverge at reconciliation.
- Examples: item is below the capitalization threshold (expense, not asset); line is freight/repair/installation miscoded to an asset account; duplicate of an existing asset; line will be credited/rebilled. Afterward, A/P (not you) must recode the GL — a rejected proposal alone doesn't fix the miscoded 1610 balance.
- Automotive Equipment: debit 6830 Depreciation Expense, credit 1730 Accumulated Depreciation, over 36 months.
- FAM's placeholder sentinel for "no depreciation has occurred yet" on a status-New asset. Expected; not an error.
- False. Having the permission isn't having the authorization — Asset Type accounts drive GL postings and the fix belongs to the administrator/controller. (This is the standing rule from Module 1: setup pages are read-only until formally authorized.)
✓ Module 3 Checkpoint: Labs A–C complete; quiz ≥ 6/7 without notes; you can recite the 6 Asset Types with accounts and lifetimes. Next: Module 4 — Depreciation: The Monthly Heartbeat, where the assets you just created start posting to the GL.
Assumptions & Sources
All configuration values (asset types, accounts, methods, lifetimes, live assets, proposals, and bills #31726/#31734) were extracted from this NetSuite account on 2026-08-21. Menu paths reflect the standard FAM SuiteApp UI and may shift slightly between bundle versions. Leases, alternate (tax) depreciation, and asset usage are configured-but-unused or absent in this account and are deliberately out of scope; they'll be introduced in Module 5 only as awareness items.