When you open AutoRec Amortization for the first time for a specific account, you will be greeted by the Setup Wizard. The first question you will be asked is how you would like your Amortization to be calculated. There are four different options available:
- Pro-rated: This is FloQast's recommended option. Most of your periods will be calculated using Straight Line, but if your start and end dates are midway through a period, daily amortization will be used to calculate those specific periods.
- Retail Straight Line: Only available for entities set up with a Retail Calendar, the amounts will be evenly divided by the number of weeks in each period your date range covers. If the Start Date is after your set Cut-Off Day (calculated by counting the number of days from the first day in the retail period), amortization will begin the following period.
- Straight Line: For Straight Line amortization, amounts will be divided by the number of periods your date range covers, and applied to each period. If the start date for an item is after the Cut-Off Day you set, amortization will begin the following period.
- Daily: For Daily amortization, amounts will be divided by the total number of days within your date range, and the amortization amounts will then be based on the number of days in each period.
Next, you will be prompted to choose how you would like to import your existing amortization schedule. Once again, you will be presented with three options:
- Summarized History
- Detailed History
- Start from scratch
Summarized History
If you choose Summarized History, you will be able to import your existing Amortization Schedule, and FloQast will summarize the past amounts and then calculate and detail future periodic amounts. If you choose this option, you will then be taken to a page where you can map the required fields to columns in your spreadsheet and then upload your schedule. After that, your amortization is ready to go!
Detailed History
If you select Detailed History, you will be able to download a convenient Excel template to use for uploading your historical amortization data.
In order to produce a customized template for your needs, you must first type in the month and year of how far back you would like your details to go. FloQast will then produce a template going back to that period.
For example: If it is currently the middle of the year and you would only like your amortization details to go as far back as January, enter the starting date as January of this year. Doing so will produce a template for you with all the necessary columns. All amortization that took place prior to January of this year will be added together and summarized in one column at the beginning of the schedule.
The Excel template you download will include all of the same columns you will see in the amortization module. Many can be left blank if you do not have the information, but the Amount is mandatory.
Note: The Amount column refers to the total amount to be amortized for that item from the start to end dates, and not only what is left.
The general information in columns A-I can be copied and pasted regularly from your source file; however, for the amortized amounts in columns J and onward, only paste as values to ensure formulas don't cause anything to change in translation. It is okay if some cells explicitly have 0s while others are left blank.
Once your template is filled out, simply save your file and return to the FloQast amortization module in order to upload it from the Setup Wizard. After that, your historical data will be in FloQast.
Start from Scratch
Finally, if you choose Start from scratch, you will simply be taken directly to the Amortization Module and can begin adding your items without any historical data imported.