Hi everyone,

I would like some guidance on the best practice for importing fixed assets into Odoo where the assets already have accumulated depreciation from a previous accounting system.

Example scenario:

• Original acquisition date: 18 Aug 2023
• Original asset value: R48,900
• Depreciation method: Straight Line
• Original useful life: 5 years
• Already depreciated amount at migration/import date: R30,970
• Remaining book value: R17,930
• Remaining useful life after migration: 4 years
• Financial year: 1 April – 31 March

The challenge I am facing is that Odoo correctly stores:

• the original acquisition date,
• original asset value,
• and imported depreciated amount,

but when computing the depreciation board, Odoo still depreciates the FULL original value (R48,900) instead of only depreciating the remaining book value (R17,930).

I also noticed that Odoo uses the acquisition/prorata logic for depreciation timing, which makes imported assets difficult to align correctly with:

• a migration depreciation start date,
• remaining useful life,
• and already depreciated balances.

I attempted to solve this using Odoo Studio by adding:

• Depreciation Start Date
• Remaining Useful Life
• Imported Asset flag

and automated actions to update the prorata date and duration, which partially solves the timing issue, but not the depreciation base calculation itself.

My questions are:

1. What is the recommended Odoo best practice for importing partially depreciated assets?

2. Should imported assets be created using:

   • original asset value + accumulated depreciation,
     OR
   • remaining book value only?
3. Is there a standard way in Odoo to tell the depreciation engine to depreciate only the remaining book value?

4. Has anyone implemented a customization for:

   • depreciation start date,
   • imported accumulated depreciation,
   • and remaining useful life handling?

Any guidance or recommended approaches would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.