Every screen and control named on this page is checked against the product at build time. If a name here does not match your screen, your workspace is on an older release.

Enter an asset and depreciate it month by month

The register of what the business owns, and the place depreciation is posted from. What the business owns, what it cost, and how much of it has been written down.

You need

• accounting.assets.read
• accounting.assets.create
• accounting.assets.update

Steps

1. Open Fixed Assets and press New asset.
2. Give the asset a Asset, a Category, its Purchased and its Cost.
3. Set the Residual value, the Useful life (months) and the Depreciation method — Straight line, or Declining balance with its Declining rate (%). Get these right the first time: The cost, residual value, useful life and method are set when the asset is entered. Depreciation is posted against them, so changing one would restate entries already in the ledger — correct it by reversing those entries and entering the asset again.
4. Name the three accounts it works through: Asset account, Depreciation expense account and Accumulated depreciation account.
5. Save, then press Post this month on the asset’s row each month. It posts a real journal entry, so it answers to the same periods and lock dates as everything else, and Depreciated to date and Net book value move with it.
6. When it goes, press Dispose, set the Disposal date and the Proceeds, and confirm with Post disposal. Selling or scrapping an asset posts its proceeds in, its cost and accumulated depreciation out, and the difference to the gain-or-loss account named in Accounting settings. A disposed asset is frozen.

Running it twice in one month is safe — the month is what it is posted against, not the press. Once depreciation has been posted the figures are fixed: Depreciation has already been posted on this asset, so its cost, residual value, life and method are fixed. Correct it by reversing those entries and entering the asset again.

Related

• Post a journal entry, and reverse one
• Take a trial balance, a profit and loss, or a balance sheet
• Open and close periods, and lock the past