Fiscal Year Variant

Assuming that you are newly implemention with go live date of Sept 1st 2006 and Fiscal year January - December, what will be the best way?
Would it be better to define a Shortened Fiscal year for Sept-Dec 2006 and then regular Fiscal years OR Define a full Fiscal year for the entire 2006 and future FYs

Normally, the best way is to keep it simple and leave the first year "normal" (12 + 4 months starting January). You convert old data as of August 31 (unless the client requests opening balance as of December 31, 2005 and then monthly movements - I have experienced both options) and then start normal bookings in month 9 on September 1.

We never tried shortened fiscal year in this context and it is surely not needed here. It just adds complexity.

If we create the normal Jan-Dec Fiscal Year for 2006 also, how will we handle the assets when we go live in Oct 2006? Do we load the book value at that time or we load the book value for January 2006 and depreciate in the system for January to September

The ordinary way is to load fixed assets which exist on September 30 (if you go live with AA module on October 1) with trans. AS91.
- First, you need to set in configuration that the last closed fiscal year for legacy data upload is 31.12.2005 and the last period for depreciation will be 9/2006. (Do it in IMG: Financial accounting - Asset accounting - Asset data transfer - Parameters for data transfer - Date specifications)

Within trans. AS91, you enter the following values:
- acquisition value and accummulated depreciation as of 01 January 2006
- all asset movements (acquisitions, retirements, but not ordinary depreciations) between January 1 and September 30 with their respective dates
- already posted depreciation in 2006 until September 30

Then you enter GL movements per month (either you temporarily change the asset reconciliation accounts for direct booking with trans. OAMK, then book with FB01 and finally reset with OAK5, or you book there directly with trans. OASV). This way, your asset accounts (acquisition value and accummulated depreciation) are the same as asset module as of September 30.

You can also let the system recalculate the depreciation from the beginning of the year, but then you may end up with a different value as of September 30 than your legacy system calculated. So, I would not recommend it unless there is no reliable source data.