NetSuite Onboarding · Role-Based Training

Fixed Assets Management
Training Program

A six-week, hands-on curriculum that takes a brand-new NetSuite user from first login to confidently owning the complete fixed-asset lifecycle — acquisition, depreciation, transfer, revaluation, and disposal.

NetSuite Role

Fixed Assets Management

Role ID

1881 · customrole_ncfar

Work Center

Accounting Center

Duration

6 Weeks

Welcome — What This Role Owns

You are the steward of the company's asset ledger. Your role was installed by NetSuite's Fixed Assets Management (FAM) SuiteApp, and its permissions were analyzed directly from this account to build this program. The shape of your access tells the story of your job:

Total Permissions

Analyzed live from role 1881 in this account.

30+

FAM Records — Full Control

Assets, proposals, depreciation methods & history, transfers, leases, system setup.

Full

Journal Entries & Invoices

How depreciation posts to the GL, and how asset-sale disposals are billed.

View

Master Data

Accounts, vendors, customers, items, subsidiaries, dimensions — you consume, not maintain.

The One-Sentence Job Description

You own everything about an asset after the purchase is recorded and until it leaves the books — someone else buys it (you can only view vendor bills), but you capitalize it, depreciate it, move it, revalue it, and dispose of it.

This Account, Specifically

This is a OneWorld account with 4 subsidiaries (Parent Company, Subsidiary 1, Subsidiary 2, and an elimination subsidiary), a calendar fiscal year, a single currency (USD), and active dimensions: 10 departments, 5 classes (product categories), and 15 locations (stores, distribution centers, 3PL/FBA). Assets you manage will carry these dimensions — you can view all of them but not edit them.

How This Program Works

Cadence: ~2 hours of guided material + ~2 hours of hands-on practice per day. Each week ends with a check-in with your mentor or manager.
Practice safely: ask your administrator for sandbox access for weeks 1–4. Weeks 5–6 shift toward shadowing real work in production.
Milestones: every week ends with a competency checkpoint. Don't move on until you can do the checkpoint items without notes.
Resources: NetSuite's built-in Help Center (the ? icon, top-right of every page), the Fixed Assets Management section of SuiteAnswers, and this document's appendix — your exact permission map.

The Six-Week Curriculum

Week 1

NetSuite Foundations — Finding Your Way Around

Goal: navigate NetSuite fluently before touching a single asset.

Log in & orient. Your role uses the Accounting Center — your menu tabs are finance-flavored (Transactions, Lists, Reports, Documents). Explore each tab without clicking Save on anything.
The dashboard. Learn portlets, reminders, and how to personalize your home page (Personalize link, top-right).
Global search. The single most valuable NetSuite skill. Learn prefix searches: cu: Anderson (customers), ve: Cabrera (vendors), tx: JE (transactions). Try page: fixed assets to jump to FAM pages.
Records vs. transactions. A record stores facts (a vendor, an account, an asset); a transaction moves value (a journal entry, an invoice). FAM assets are custom records that generate transactions.
Lists you can see. Browse the Chart of Accounts, vendors, customers, items, departments, classes, and locations — all view-only for you. Notice how every transaction line carries subsidiary + dimension tags.
Perform Search. Run a simple saved search (Lists > Search > Saved Searches) and filter a list. You'll live in searches later for asset audits.

✓ Checkpoint: navigate to any record in under 15 seconds using global search; explain the difference between a record and a transaction; name the 4 subsidiaries.

Week 2

Accounting Context — The GL You'll Be Posting Into

Goal: understand the financial plumbing FAM connects to.

Chart of accounts tour. With your accounting mentor, walk the asset section: fixed-asset cost accounts, accumulated-depreciation accounts, depreciation-expense accounts, gain/loss on disposal. These are the accounts FAM will post to on your behalf.
Journal entries — your Full permission. Learn to read a JE: debits, credits, subsidiary, department/class/location, memo. In sandbox, create and delete a small practice JE. FAM generates JEs automatically; you must be able to read and trace them.
Accounting periods. You have view access — learn how monthly periods open and close (this account uses calendar months: "Aug 2026", "Q3 2026", "FY 2026"), and why depreciation must run before the period closes.
Vendor bills (view-only). Open several posted vendor bills. Find the line-level expense account and amount — these are the source documents FAM scans to propose new assets to you.
Invoices (Full). Skim the invoice form. You'll use invoices later when an asset is disposed of by sale to a buyer.

✓ Checkpoint: read any depreciation-style JE aloud correctly (account, side, amount, dimensions); explain why period close deadlines matter to your job.

Week 3

FAM Core — Assets, Types, and Acquisition

Goal: create assets correctly, both from proposals and by hand.

The FAM data model. Master the records you fully control: FAM Asset (the asset itself), Asset Type (templates that carry default accounts, method, and lifetime), Depreciation Method, and Lifetimes. Rule of thumb: get the Asset Type right and 80% of the asset configures itself.
Asset statuses & lifecycle. New → Depreciating → Fully Depreciated → Disposed. Learn what each status permits.
Asset Proposal — the main intake flow. Run Fixed Assets > Transactions > Asset Proposal: FAM scans vendor-bill lines posted to asset accounts and proposes assets. Review, correct, and generate assets from proposals. Practice rejecting a bad proposal too.
Manual asset creation. Create an asset from scratch (a legacy or donated asset): cost, residual value, method, lifetime, depreciation start date, subsidiary, and dimensions.
Key fields deep-dive. Depreciation start date vs. purchase date; residual (salvage) value; the difference between asset current cost and net book value.
Documents & Files (Create). Attach an invoice PDF or photo to an asset record — you have create access to the file cabinet for exactly this.

✓ Checkpoint: in sandbox, take one vendor bill from proposal → generated asset with correct type, dimensions, and start date; create one manual asset; explain what an Asset Type controls.

Week 4

Depreciation — The Monthly Heartbeat

Goal: run, verify, and troubleshoot the monthly depreciation cycle.

Depreciation concepts. Straight-line vs. declining-balance and the other methods configured in this account; how period conventions affect the first and last period.
Run depreciation. Fixed Assets > Transactions > Asset Depreciation: select subsidiary(ies), asset types, and the target period; run the process. In this OneWorld account you'll typically run per subsidiary — confirm the house convention with your mentor.
Background processing. FAM runs as background jobs. Learn the Process Status page (BG Process Instance/Log records you have full access to): queued → in progress → completed, and how to read the log when something fails.
Verify the posting. Trace one asset: Depreciation History record → generated Journal Entry → GL impact on accumulated depreciation and expense. Confirm net book value decremented correctly.
Depreciation schedules & reports. Run the FAM depreciation schedule reports (Net Book Value, Depreciation Schedule NBV/PD) and tie totals to the GL.
Month-end rhythm. Where depreciation sits in this company's close calendar; what to do when accounting asks you to re-run or catch up a period.

✓ Checkpoint: run depreciation for one period in sandbox, verify the JE line-by-line, and locate the background process log for your run without help.

Week 5

Mid-Life & End-of-Life Events

Goal: handle everything that happens to an asset between acquisition and the end.

Transfers. Move an asset between subsidiaries, departments, classes, or locations using the Asset Transfer entry. Understand the FAM Asset Transfer Accounts mapping that drives the inter-company GL posting — critical in this 4-subsidiary account.
Revaluation. Write an asset up or down with the Revaluation entry; see the effect on subsequent depreciation.
Disposal — write-off vs. sale. Practice both: a scrapped asset (write-off) and a sold asset (sale — this generates an invoice, which is why your role has Full invoice access). Trace the gain/loss posting.
Asset splits & usage. Split one asset into several; record Asset Usage for units-of-production depreciation if used here.
Repairs & maintenance. Log R&M against the categories configured in FAM (you have full access to the R&M category records) — and learn the capitalize-vs-expense policy question to escalate to accounting.
Leases. Tour the Lease Contract and Lease Payment records; with your accounting mentor, review how this company applies lease accounting (ASC 842) in FAM — policy is theirs, mechanics are yours.
Alternate depreciation. Understand tax books: alternate methods let one asset depreciate differently for tax vs. book reporting. Know where they're configured; follow the tax team's instructions when setting them.

✓ Checkpoint: complete one transfer, one write-off disposal, and one sale disposal in sandbox, correctly tracing each GL posting; explain when you'd escalate to accounting vs. act alone.

Week 6

Reporting, Auditability & Going Live

Goal: prove the asset ledger, support an audit, and take ownership.

The reconciliation habit. Monthly: FAM Net Book Value report vs. GL fixed-asset and accumulated-depreciation account balances. Investigate any difference the day you find it.
Audit support. Build (or run) saved searches for asset additions, disposals, and transfers in a date range; export to CSV; attach supporting documents. Depreciation History records are your audit trail — learn to filter them by asset, period, and transaction type.
Troubleshooting toolkit. The FAM Recent Diagnosis and background process log records; the classic failure modes (asset missing a method or lifetime, period closed, missing transfer account mapping) and how to read the error text.
System setup awareness. You have full access to FAM System Setup — tour it with your administrator so you understand what the switches do, and agree on which ones you may change alone (usually: none without a second pair of eyes).
Capstone exercise. In sandbox, run a complete mini-cycle solo: propose & generate 3 assets from bills → run one month of depreciation → transfer one asset between subsidiaries → dispose of one by sale → reconcile FAM to GL → present the story to your mentor with the JEs as evidence.

✓ Checkpoint (graduation): capstone completed end-to-end without assistance, reconciliation ties to the penny, and you can answer "where did this number come from?" for every posting you made.

Insight — Why Your Permissions Are Shaped This Way

Notice the deliberate boundary: view-only on vendor bills and all master data, but full on FAM records and journal entries. NetSuite's designers separated procurement (buying the asset) from capitalization (accounting for it) so no single person controls a purchase from order to books. Respect that boundary — when a bill is wrong, route it back to A/P rather than working around it.

Risks & Assumptions

This program assumes a sandbox is available for weeks 1–4 practice. If not, all "create" exercises must be shadowed by a mentor in production and unwound afterward.
Depreciation runs post real journal entries. Never run depreciation in production during training without explicit sign-off.
Lease accounting and tax (alternate) depreciation involve policy decisions owned by accounting and tax — this program teaches the mechanics only.
Your Full access to FAM System Setup and company setup pages exceeds what you should exercise as a new hire; treat those pages as read-only until formally authorized.

Day-One Quick Reference

Your Daily / Monthly Rhythm

Weekly: run Asset Proposal; review and generate or reject every proposed asset.
Monthly (before close): run depreciation per subsidiary; verify background jobs completed; trace at least one JE.
Monthly (after close): reconcile FAM Net Book Value to the GL; file the reconciliation.
As needed: transfers, disposals, revaluations, splits — always with a documented reason attached to the asset.
Quarterly: spot-audit 10 assets — do the record, the documents, and the physical asset agree?

Who to Call

A/P team — wrong or missing vendor bills (you can see them, not fix them).
Accounting / Controller — capitalization policy, thresholds, lease treatment, period-close timing.
Tax team — alternate/tax depreciation methods.
NetSuite Administrator — permission issues, FAM system settings, failed background jobs you can't diagnose.

Appendix — Your Exact Permission Map

Extracted live from role 1881 (customrole_ncfar) in this account. Levels: Full create/edit/delete Edit create/edit Create view/create View read-only.

Fixed Assets — Your Domain

Permission	Level	What It Means for You
FAM Asset · Asset Proposal · Asset Type · Asset Values	Full	Create, edit, and manage every asset record and its intake pipeline.
FAM Depreciation Method · Lifetimes · Depreciation History	Full	Configure how assets depreciate; full visibility into the audit trail.
FAM Alternate Depreciation · Alternate Methods · Default Alt Depreciation · Proposal Alt Depreciation	Full	Maintain tax-book depreciation alongside the accounting book.
FAM Asset Transfer Accounts · Transaction Field Map	Full	The GL account mappings behind transfers and FAM postings.
FAM Special Depreciation · Asset Usage · Expense/Income	Full	Bonus/special depreciation and units-of-production inputs.
FAM Repair & Maint Category / Sub A / Sub B	Full	Repairs & maintenance classification records.
Lease Contract · Lease Payments	Full	Lease accounting records under FAM.
FAM System Setup · FAM Process · Recent Diagnosis · BG Process Instance / Log / Summary	Full	Module configuration, background jobs, and diagnostics.
Fixed Asset Depreciation / Disposal / Transfer / Revaluation Entry · Special Depreciation Entry · Lease	Edit	The lifecycle event entry forms — create and edit, no delete.
FAM Asset Reset Data	Create	Asset reset utility — use only under administrator guidance.
FAM Paper Size · BG Queue Instance	View	Reference/system records.

Transactions

Permission	Level	What It Means for You
Make Journal Entry	Full	FAM posts depreciation, transfer, and disposal JEs through your role; you can also make manual corrections (per policy).
Invoice	Full	Billing the buyer when an asset is disposed of by sale.
Find Transaction	Full	Search and trace any transaction.
Bills (Vendor Bills)	View	Read the source documents behind asset proposals — you cannot create or edit them.

Master Data & Setup (Consume, Don't Maintain)

Permission	Level	Notes
Accounts · Customers · Vendors · Items · Projects · Currency · Subsidiaries · Departments · Classes · Locations · Entity-Subsidiary Relationship · Installment Payment Links	View	Everything you need to see to tag assets correctly.
Manage Accounting Periods · Close Manager Tasks · Bulk Processing Submissions · Perform Search	View	Period-close visibility and search.
Tax Records	Create	Limited tax-record access used by FAM postings.
Documents and Files	Create	Attach invoices, photos, warranties to assets.
Set Up Company · Auto-Generated Numbers · Agent Skill · Address List in Search	Full	Granted by the FAM bundle for its own configuration needs — treat as read-only unless directed.
Address List in Search (LIST_OTHER_ADDRESS)	Full	Address visibility in searches.