March 13, 2002

The Office of the State Controller has recently completed enhancements to reports generated from the North Carolina Accounting System (NCAS) Fixed Asset (FA) module in response to new governmental reporting requirements. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) Statement 34 requires governmental funds to report depreciation on depreciable capital assets in the governmental-wide statements for the 2002 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR). The OSC will calculate the depreciation for the governmental funds for those agencies who use the FA system. Due to the reliance the OSC is placing on the FA system for CAFR reporting, it is imperative that the data in the FA system be accurate.

The OSC has analyzed and evaluated all the current fixed asset reports that reflect assets >= $5000. Enhancements have been made to these reports and new reports have also been developed. The following is a list of changes that will be implemented with the FA reports being processed for the month ending March 2002.

• All reports reflecting assets >= $5000 will now be identified and referred to as the capital asset reports and will run monthly as well as at year end.
• As of March 31, all fixed asset reports will be modified to read the ten digit asset numbers as individual assets. This change may cause some prior year capitalized assets to be dropped from the capital fixed assets reports for 2002, therefore creating a reconciling issue between the 2001 ending balance and the new 2001 beginning balance. This difference should be included on your CAFR fixed asset footnote worksheet as a prior year adjustment. Your OSC analyst will supply each agency with a report showing these dropped assets from the capitalization reports.
• FA standard reports in both Systemware (Exporter) and Information Expert (IE) have been modified by the OSC to reflect these modifications and changes.
• Agencies will be responsible for making the necessary changes to any reports in their personal IE report directories. The agency reports must be changed to read the ten digit asset numbers as individual assets consistent with the change made to the FA standard reports.
• The State Information Guide (SIG) and the Fixed Asset Training class are in the process of being updated with these new changes.

Thank you for your assistance as we implement these changes required for the new reporting model mandated by GASB 34. Please contact the OSC Support Services at (919) 875-4357 if you have any questions or problems concerning running or viewing these reports.