Moving depreciation out of UltraTax CS when all you have is the printout

Ask around about moving depreciation off UltraTax CS and you will be told, confidently and often, that it cannot be done — that fixed asset data does not convert to another tax program and the schedule has to be rebuilt by hand.

That advice is not wrong so much as answering a different question than the one usually being asked. It describes the situation where you have the client file. Most preparers asking have a PDF.

Those are two different problems with two different answers, and collapsing them is why the manual rebuild gets recommended to people who do not need it.

Why UltraTax specifically produces this confusion

UltraTax CS does not import assets from a spreadsheet the way Drake and Lacerte do. Not for 1040, not for 1120, not for 1065 — direct spreadsheet import exists in the 706 module and not elsewhere. Assets arrive through Fixed Assets CS, which then feeds the return.

So there is a real asymmetry, and any accurate answer has to acknowledge it. UltraTax is not a suite where you drop in a CSV.

The documentation people find when they go looking describes exporting from the client file — the CSD data that lives in the software. That is the correct procedure, and it is useless to the person holding a 40-page PDF that someone emailed them, because the client file is precisely what they were not sent.

Two situations, and only one of them is hard

The data still lives in Fixed Assets CS somewhere. Then the export exists. Fixed Assets CS holds assets per treatment, with the client file as the source of record, and the sensible request to the outgoing firm is that file or an export from it rather than a printout. This is a smaller ask than it sounds and it is worth making before you do anything else, because no printed report carries as much as the file does.

All you have is a printed asset report. Then nothing is going to hand you a client file, and the question becomes what the printed page actually contains — which turns out to be most of what an import needs, and not quite all of it.

The phrase "rebuild the schedule manually" quietly implies the first situation's data is unrecoverable and the second situation's data does not exist. Neither is true. What is true is that getting a printed report into another suite is a transcription job, and transcription jobs are tedious and error-prone when done by hand — which is a different complaint than impossibility.

UltraTax prints more than one report with the same assets on it

This is the part that catches people, and it is worth more attention than the export mechanics.

A single UltraTax client file will print several asset reports that look nearly identical. Across real filings we have read, the recurring set is a Federal Asset Report, an AMT Asset Report and a Future Depreciation Report — the same assets, the same descriptions, different figures. A Fixed Assets CS print, meanwhile, is usually headed Tax Asset Detail, sectioned by asset group.

Every one of those reports foots correctly against its own totals. So if you transcribe the AMT copy by mistake, nothing about the result looks wrong: the columns line up, the totals agree, and the numbers are simply the wrong ones. A future depreciation report is worse, because it is a projection of a year that has not happened.

Read the report title on the first page of the range you are working from, and check it again at any page where a new heading appears — a bundle assembled for a filing will happily run one report straight into the next without a cover page between them.

What the printed report carries

A typical UltraTax federal asset report gives you, per asset: description, date placed in service, cost, business-use percentage, §179 taken, bonus taken, prior depreciation, current depreciation, and a compact method notation of the form 5 HY 200DB — recovery period, convention, method, in one field that has to be split into three before any import will accept it.

A Fixed Assets CS Tax Asset Detail is organised by group and carries the tax treatment's cost, current §179 and bonus in their own columns.

Two gaps are worth knowing about in advance rather than discovering mid-import.

Treatments do not all print. Fixed Assets CS holds Tax, Book, AMT and State treatments, each with its own prior depreciation. A federal report prints one of them. If the client has state figures that differ, the printed federal report does not contain them, and no amount of careful transcription will produce them.

Bonus is not an importable field on the way in. Fixed Assets CS computes the special depreciation allowance rather than accepting it, so a column you carefully carried across may have nowhere to land. That is a property of the destination, not of your source document, and it is better to know before you build the file than after it rejects.

What "manual" should actually mean here

The honest version of the advice is narrower than the one usually given.

Nothing needs rebuilding, in the sense of recomputing a schedule from first principles. The figures exist, they are printed, and they are authoritative — a prior preparer's report is the record of what was actually claimed. What is manual is moving them, and the risk in that is not conceptual but clerical: a dropped row in a 200-asset book, a cost read out of the column beside the one you wanted, a 5 HY 200DB split into the wrong three fields.

Those failures are invisible on inspection, which is why the check that matters is arithmetic rather than visual: tie the transcribed rows against the totals the report printed, per group and in grand total. The tie-out is the only step in this process that can tell you the transcription is right, however it was produced.

What we do with it

Straight about where this stands: Drake, Lacerte and ProConnect are supported destinations today. UltraTax through the Fixed Assets CS template is next in the queue and is not shipping yet, so if UltraTax is where the assets are going, the last mapping step is currently yours.

What works today is the other direction, and it is the more common one. An UltraTax federal asset report or a Fixed Assets CS Tax Asset Detail is a supported source: the assets come off the page into a Drake, Lacerte or ProConnect import file, with the report's own printed totals used as the check. Both are covered on the UltraTax and Fixed Assets CS page, and if you are mid-migration generally, switching tax software is the wider version of the same job.

As always, what a document did not print does not get invented. A state treatment that is not on the page comes back empty and flagged rather than filled with the federal figure.

FAQ

Can UltraTax CS import fixed assets from a spreadsheet?

Not for 1040, 1120 or 1065. Direct spreadsheet import exists in the 706 module only. For the other modules, assets enter through Fixed Assets CS, which then feeds the return.

Do I really have to rebuild a depreciation schedule by hand when leaving UltraTax?

Only the moving of the figures is manual, and only when the client file is unavailable. The printed asset report is an authoritative record of what was claimed, so the work is transcription rather than reconstruction — a distinction that matters, because reconstruction would mean deciding things the document already settled.

Which UltraTax report should I be working from?

Check the title on the page. A client file commonly prints a federal asset report, an AMT asset report and a future depreciation report with the same assets and different figures, and each one foots correctly against its own totals — so a tie-out will not catch the mistake of using the wrong one.

What does the compact method notation mean?

A field reading 5 HY 200DB packs the recovery period, the convention and the method into one string. Every import format expects them as separate fields, so it has to be split before the file will load.

Will state depreciation survive the move?

Not from a federal printout. Fixed Assets CS holds separate treatments including state, but a federal asset report prints the federal treatment. If state figures differ, they are not on that page and have to come from the client file or from the state report.

Is UltraTax supported as a destination here yet?

Not yet — Drake, Lacerte and ProConnect are. UltraTax through Fixed Assets CS is next in the queue. UltraTax and Fixed Assets CS reports work as sources today.