The CMMS, which the maintenance teams use to organize operations, is mainly accessed by other departments, including the finance department. The finance department requires access to the software for tax purposes and bookkeeping. Through the CMMS, tax and accounting specialists review major and minor repairs made to capital assets. Minor repairs are deducted immediately, while major repairs or improvements are depreciated over time.
After data is retrieved from the CMMS, the finance team retrieves data from other software systems, such as enterprise asset management (EAM) software. Using two separate systems - one for tracking repairs and another for tracking the value of assets over time - could be more efficient. The CMMS allows companies to store all asset-related data in one place, with features such as depreciation tracking to improve efficiency.
Asset managers can log data once in the CMMS rather than entering the same data in multiple systems such as EAM software, ERP software, and accounting software like QuickBooks. The CMMS then syncs with these other systems. For example, the maintenance team logs the parts and cost data in the CMMS when a major repair is completed on an asset. Instead of the asset manager emailing the finance team about the repair, the CMMS can automatically send the information to QuickBooks.
Since depreciation is an allocation process and not a valuation process, the maintenance team can align better with the accounting team when there is bookkeeping data in the CMMS.
In addition to EAM, some customers use CMMS software, even though it often includes asset-specific features such as warranty tracking, downtime tracking, and depreciation tracking. Having two systems with overlapping features can be expensive and inefficient, so it is often considered irresponsible to use both CMMS and EAM software.