CMI Fixed Assets Blog

We'd like to announce an exciting new feature available within CMI Fixed Assets!

You now have the ability to consolidate several companies within CMI into a single main company!

Now a few simple steps can consolidate several companies at one time! For example, if you prefer to use the companies within CMI as separate locations or departments, but need to consolidate those to be able to print a multi-company report, you can now use the Consolidate Companies feature to do so.

To consolidate your companies within CMI Fixed Assets, thus creating a New consolidated company, the steps are as follows:

Tools -> Consolidate Companies -> New

The program will then prompt you to Enter a new consolidated company number. This will denote your main Consolidated Company.

Next you will be prompted to choose the member companies for consolidation. Select, using your mouse, the companies to be consolidated from the list of companies shown.

*Note: Each company you choose to consolidate must have the same number of characters in the asset numbers (shown under the Edit company screen, max. of 9 characters/digits long) and the same schedules (i.e. Tax, Book, State, etc).

You can then type in the Consolidated Company Name.

The User Field to Contain Member Company No. is just one of the ten User Defined Fields on the Edit Company screen. You can choose to use any of the ten fields. It will contain the number of the member company where each asset is located.

Then simply click OK in the top right corner of the Box shown above.

You can now print reports from your Consolidated Company that will show a consolidated list of all assets in the member companies selected.

*Note: Assets from company one will be marked with an A before each asset number, B for company two, and so on. For example, here you can see I had two of the same asset numbers in each company had an asset with the same number, thus asset number 94 from company one is denoted with an A while asset 94 from company two is denoted with a B. In this case where the asset descriptions are the same, the letters preceding the asset numbers serve as a means of differentiation between the assets in the consolidated companies.

In the first screen shot shown at the top of the post notice you also have the options under Consolidate Companies to Change or Update. The Change feature is used to add or remove Member Companies or otherwise make changes to an original consolidated company. Update is used after making changes to any member company as a means of updating those changes in the consolidated company to print up to date reports. Also, please be aware that changes to assets within the consolidated company ARE NOT PERMANENT! Changes to individual assets should be made in the specific member company.

The Consolidated Companies feature is available in the current version of CMI located under Downloads -> Updates on our website www.cmifixedassets.com.

If you have any questions concerning this feature or anything else related to CMI please contact us at 1-800-678-3658.

We'd like to wish you and yours a
Merry Christmas,
Happy Hanukkah,
Happy Holidays,
and a Happy New Year
from all of us here at CMI Software, Inc!

Always, always back up your data!

There are several automatic backup prompts built into CMI such as during a Year End Close or a Multiple Asset Change. Whenever prompted choosing to backup is always the right answer.

One of the reasons backups are always recommended is that it makes it possible to retrieve a prior year's data, even if you didn't make a copy of that year within CMI Fixed Assets. As long as you choose to backup during the Year End close, you will have a copy of the prior year available to you within your CMI data folder that you can retreive at anytime. Once you retreive that file you can print reports just like when that year was open in CMI.

To retrieve a prior year's backup copy, first open the company related to that file. Then click Tools > Company File/Backup Restore. This is also the place to save a backup copy manually anytime you wish. At this point you would simply click Save in the top right hand corner to create a backup copy of your company at that current point in time.

However, if you already have a backup file made, you'll see a list of all available backup files with date and time stamps. They'll also have a note related to why they were backed up.

For example, if you made a backup during the Year End close process, that file will have a note that says Prior to MM/DD/YYYY year end close like the file highlighted in blue above.

To retrieve that file, click on it, so that it's highlighted in blue (again, as shown above), then the Retrieve button becomes available to you in the top right corner. Click Retrieve. You will then be prompted to give it a new company number. This is so the retrieved backup copy doesn't overwrite or become confused with your current copy. 

Once you've given it a new company number click OK. The retrieved company will now be available to you once you click Select Company in the company listing. From there you can print reports, look at assets, make changes, just as if you were still in that year.

Please let us know if you have any questions in the comment section below, or you can call 1-800-678-3658 from 8am to 5pm Mountain time during the winter months.

Have you come across the situation where you sold a company; or a branch of the company; or otherwise needed to dispose of several assets at one time?

Did you know that there is a Multiple Asset Disposition feature with CMI Fixed Assets? Well, there is! For this week's Tip Tuesday, we're going to discuss how to use that feature.

To find this feature, click on Tools in the top left corner of your CMI screen. Then Change Multiple Assets > Disposition.

This brings up the Multiple Asset Disposition Box.

Here you can choose to dispose of ALL the assets in your company by selecting Change all assets OR a specific group of assets by selecting Select Assets to Change.

It also gives you the option of what disposal code you'd like to apply to the assets depending on whether you are selling or abandoning.

If you are utilizing a different basis for each schedule, you can select the schedule that is used to determine the asset basis. In this case either Book or Tax up above. Yours will have whatever schedules you are using within CMI available to you.

You'll then be able to type in your Disposal Date and the Total Sale Amount (if selling, if abandoning this area will be grayed out) for the group of assets you are disposing.

*Something to keep in mind here is that this tool is most useful for assets being disposed of on one date. If you are disposing of assets over several dates, it is best to use the Dispositions tab under Edit Asset to dispose of each individual assets with their own dates.

Once you're finished making your selections as discussed above click ok. If you chose to dispose of all assets, the report will run with those dispositions. If you chose selected assets, the Asset Selection box will pop up next. Here we talked about selecting multiple assets through CMI. You can review that Tip Tuesday on more ways to use that feature.

If you have any questions about disposing of multiple assets within CMI Fixed Assets, feel free to contact us at anytime!

1-800-678-3658 We're here to help!

Have a great week!

The Asset Selection dialog box allows you to select criteria used by CMI Fixed Assets to determine which assets to print or display.

The left side of the dialog contains checkboxes for many of the asset input fields. If you check a field, you can then enter criteria to be used. For example, if you check Asset Number, you can enter a range of assets to be selected. If you enter 150-200, only assets 150 through 200 will be printed or displayed.

Asset selection criteria can be saved and retrieved. This feature is helpful if you find yourself repeatedly making selections using the same criteria.

Entering Ranges

For ranges, you can enter either individual values (such as 10,20,30) or minimum-maximum pairs (such as 100-200 which indicates the range of values from 100 through 200). Individual values and minimum-maximum pairs can be combined (for example 1-10,20,30). Some input fields allow hyphens (-) or commas (,) as part of the value. For example, account numbers may have hyphens in them; if you enter 100-200, you may be indicating the range of values from 100 through 200, or you may be indicating a single account number 100-200. To distinguish between the two situations, you can enclose the value in quotation marks (either ' or "). For example "100"-"200" means the range of account numbers 100 through 200, and "100-200" means the single account number 100-200.

You can leave out the upper or lower limit. For example -100 means all values up to and including 100. 5000- means all values above or equal to 5000. If you need to indicate a negative number, put it in quotation marks.

Wildcard characters are allowed when entering values for the asset description and user-definable fields. Enter a question mark (?) for a single character that can have any value, or an asterisk (*) for any group of characters that can have any value. For example to select all assets with a description that begins with Chevy, enter

Chevy*

in the description field. To select all assets with the word Chevy anywhere in the description, enter

*Chevy*

If you want to select all Chevys with model years in the 1990s, you might try entering

199? Chevy

in the description field. Finally, if you want to select an item that actually has one of the wildcard characters, enter a backslash (\) before entering the character. For example, enter

\**

to select all assets that begin with an asterisk. (\* represents the asterisk, and then the second asterisk means any characters can follow.)

For more on entering Asset Selection criteria see the Manual under the Help menu in your CMI Fixed Asset software. Pages 66-68

As always if you have questions or comments concerning this blog post or anything else related to the CMI Fixed Asset software please contact us at 1-800-678-3658 or at support@cmifixedassets.com.

Have a GREAT week!

Let's say your accountant or other colleague emails you a backup file of a company to open within CMI Fixed Assets... How would you go about opening that file?

First save the file to your desktop, or other easily accessible location. We most often recommend the desktop as that's easy to remember and easy to access.

Here you can see I've saved my Demo company backup file to my desktop.
*Make a note that backup files are a .bkp file.

Next you'll open your CMI Software. Click on Tools -> Company File/Backup Restore in the top left of the main CMI screen. It will require you to select a company at this point. Any company will do. The company you select has nothing to do with the retrieval, it simply allows you to access the next screen.
*Another note: You must have at least one company saved within your current data path to be able to perform this action.

This brings you to the Company Backup Files Box. Here you'll select Browse in the upper right of the box.

There you will scroll through your computer to find your Desktop. Usually at the very top of the list, or the location to where you backup file is saved.

Once you've located that spot click on it so that it's highlighted in blue, then Click Ok.

Now you should see the company file in the Company Backup Files box that you are trying to retrieve. Click on it so that it's highlighted in blue, then click on the Retrieve button to the right.

Here it will ask you for a new company number. Be sure to give it something distinctive so you can tell it from the other files are located in your data.

*Note: Once you click ok, you will still need to select this retrieved company from the Select Company Screen. But once you do you will have access to that company and can print reports, enter depreciation, etc. just like normal.

If you have any questions concerning this Tip or anything else related to CMI Fixed Assets, please contact us at 1-800-678-3658.

FYI: You can now follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn!

CMI Fixed Assets has a Depreciation Projection feature.

You can find it under Reports on the left side bar or across the top under Depreciation Projection. 

This feature/report allows you to project your depreciation either 5 years or 10 years into the future. 

Once you click the Depreciation Projection icon, the Projection box pops up. It shows the current year end as well as the first projection year end at the top of the box. 

The black arrow points to the spot where you can select 5 years into the future or 10 years into the future. 

You can also choose to project the data for all assets or selected assets as determined by your chosen criteria. And as with all other reports within CMI you can choose which schedule you would like to project AND whether you want totals only or asset details. 

These projections are based on the assets that you have currently entered into the CMI Fixed Asset software. To create a what if scenario, you could create a new company and enter data based on the possible acquisition and disposition of assets as well. 

If you have any questions concerning the projection of depreciation data within CMI Fixed Assets, or anything else related to CMI, please feel free to contact us at 1-800-678-3658.

Within CMI Fixed Assets, the depreciation that is shared through the Depreciation Schedule reports is your annual depreciation. If you want to see depreciation for just one month or by month that can be found under the Month/Quarter Depreciation report. 

Once you click the Month/Quarter Depreciation report icon, it gives you the option to choose Monthly or Quarterly. In this case I chose monthly. Now the Depreciation By Month box is available. 

Here you can choose to print the full year's depreciation by month, or you can choose a single month. 

If I had chose Quarter after clicking the Month/Quarter icon, the Depreciation by Quarter box would be available. Here you can see you now have the option to print the depreciation for the full year by quarter or you can choose a single quarter to print as well. 

Available at bottom of both boxes, is the option to include Year to Date Amounts, the Original Cost or the Net Book Value. You can choose to add any of these items simply by selecting the circle next to the information you would like to include.

If you have any questions concerning printing Monthly or Quarterly reports, please feel free to contact us here at CMI at 1-800-678-3658 and we would be glad to assist you! 

Last week we discussed accessing your CMI Fixed Assets data on a network from a new computer. This week we would like to share another option of data retrieval; copying company files from an old computer to a new computer.

This is as simple as copy and paste. To access your the CMI data on your old computer, first locate the CMITSWIN file on your C drive.

Once you locate that file, open it, then scroll down to locate your company files. They will be files with your company number as the prefix. In my case my company number is DEMO1. So I am looking for all files with a DEMO1. prefix.

The number of files per company will depend on the items included in that file as well as the size of that company and it's data. You can see my DEMO1 file is a rather large company so there is a large number of files. Make sure you find all of the company files for the company or companies that you keep track of and highlight those files.

Quick Tip* - To highlight a huge list of files at one time, click on the top file, hold down the SHIFT key on your keyboard, then click on the last file. This will highlight all the files between the two.

Then simpy right click and Copy. From there you can either paste the files into an email to send and open on your new computer, or paste them onto a USB or other external drive to open on the new computer.

Once you get those files opened on your new computer, simply copy and paste them into the new computer's C:\CMITSWIN folder.

Once that's been done you may need to rebuild the Master File so that the software will know to read those new files. To do that click on Tools > Rebuild Files > Master File.

Rebuilding the Master File will only take a second, then you can select a company and start using the CMI Fixed Assets on your new computer.

Have a great week! And if you have any questions or comments, or need any assistance with your CMI Fixed Asset Software, please feel free to contact us at 1-800-678-3658.

Since we are located in Arizona, we are available from 8:00 am - 5:00 pm Pacific time during the summer months.

Last week we talked about installing CMI Fixed Assets on a new computer. This week, we'd like to discuss accessing CMI data saved on your network from a new computer.

If your data is saved on a network, it can be accessed from the new computer simply by changing the configuration.

Here you see the data path of the new computer is currently, C:\CMITSWIN. That's the location of your new computer's hard drive.

To access the network where your files are saved click Tools > Configuration.

Click 0 Standard so that it's highlighted in blue (if it already isn't), then click Change.

Now you will see the 'Edit Configuration' box. You will also see the data path again and below it to the right a Browse button. Click Browse.

Now you can scroll through the 'Browse for Folder' box to find the network location of your CMI data. Once you find it, click on it so that it's highlighted in blue and click OK. Click OK in the 'Edit Configuration' box.

Now your data path should read as the Network file location of your CMI Data. In this case, it now reads S:\Ron's Computer\CMITSWIN which is the network location of my data. Yours will be different obviously according to the file name of your data location.

From here you can select a company and begin working in CMI Fixed Assets on your new computer.

The other option for accessing data from an old computer is to move the data from the old computer to the new computer. We will be discussing that process next week.

Enjoy your day! And if you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact us at 1-800-678-3658.