2012 Review of Red Moon Solutions LLC – Fixed Assets Manager

Red Moon Solutions LLC – Fixed Assets Manager
800-224-1260
www.redmoonsolutions.com

 
From the Dec. 2012 review of fixed asset management systems.

Best Fit: Fixed Assets Manager is designed primarily for use by companies and organizations with extensive or complex asset management and depreciation strategies, such as those with large asset bases, multiple locations and departments. It can also be used by accounting firms providing services to such clients.

Strengths

• Available as installed or an online hosted program
• Strong reporting capabilities
• Able to integrate directly with ERP systems and with Vertex for corporate tax
• Ability to easily integrate with other compliance solutions such as CORPTAX and Thomson OneSource
• Many customization options
• Comprehensive depreciation calculations
• Entity consolidation functions

Potential Limitations

• Moderate in-system help features

Fixed Assets Manager (FAM) from Red Moon Solutions is a comprehensive depreciation and asset management system designed for entities with complex asset taxation needs and is used by companies in the Fortune 500 and Global 1,000. The system can support any number of independent or inter-related entities with unlimited groups, departments, locations and assets, providing extensive consolidation capabilities and unlimited books per asset. It supports all common methods of depreciation as well as custom treatments. The program is available either as an installed program or an online hosted solution.

Basic System Functions: 4.75 Stars

FAM is easy to use, and offers free online tips and tricks, multiple wizards and guides during initial setup that help with creation of companies, departments and groups. For asset entry, it offers import from several formats, as well as manual entry options that include the ability to use standard templates, create custom templates or duplicate companies and assets.

The program’s primary interface is intuitive and offers pull-down and icon-based navigation menus across the top, while a three-paned screen provides an expandable navigation menu and access to asset lists and books for the selected company. From the asset menu, users can quickly see and access assets by department, as well as functions for filtering by group, location or other organizational structures. The program displays asset lists on customizable spreadsheet screens that provide summary information.

Many areas of the program can be customized by users based on their security access rights, including navigation menus and asset data views. FAM allows the creation of unlimited user-defined fields for tracking any data, including GL numbers and cost centers.

Asset detail screens open to show all books, and provide tabbed access to in-depth book views, periods, accounting information (user-defined fields), transactions, ITC, UOP, advanced data, attached images and files, and notes. Changes to convention, method, life and other data, or asset disposal actions are automatically calculated across all affected data.

FAM can be used to manage any number of entities with unlimited assets, as well as entities with multiple subsidiary units, and any number of staff can access the program at the same time, with security features preventing overwrite of data.

Core Asset Management Feature: 4.75 Stars

Fixed Assets Manager provides extensive support for all depreciation methods and conventions, and has built-in calculations for MACRS 150/200, ACRS, straight-line, modified straight-line, declining balance, sum-of-the-year’s-digits, units of production, zero depreciation and amortization for intangible assets. Each asset can have any number of user-defined books, with customizable preconfigured books provided for Federal tax, AMT, ACE and Accounting. The program can also recalculate prior depreciation, and supports mid-quarter, full month, mid-month, actual month and half-year conventions, plus support for short years and 52/53 week years.