All guidesFixed assets
Depreciate an asset, and retire it
Post the monthly charge an asset is due, and record what happened when you finally let it go.
- Steps
- 4 · About 3 min
- Who can do this
- Owner · Manager · Accountant
- Needs the module
- Fixed assets
Before you start
A registered asset has two things left to happen to it: it wears out, month by month, and one day it leaves.
Open Assets — the screen leads with whichever asset has a charge due, which is the monthly job.
Post the depreciation that is due
What to look at:
Post this depreciation — the whole control. There is no amount to type and no period to choose: both come from the schedule set when the asset was registered, and the date being posted is shown above the button.
That is deliberate. Depreciation is arithmetic, and an amount somebody can type is an amount somebody can get wrong. Your part is deciding when to run it, not what it comes to.
Post it monthly, as part of closing the month. Each posting writes its own accounting entry, so a skipped month is a visible gap in the journal rather than a silent one.
Retire or sell it
When the asset goes — sold, scrapped, written off — record it here.
What to look at:
Disposal date — the day it left. It decides which period carries the result.
Net proceeds — what you actually got for it. Enter zero for a write-off or a scrapping, which is a real answer, not a blank one.
Receiving account — where the money landed, if any came in. Needed only when the proceeds are more than zero.
Record retirement — one press, and the asset leaves the register.
Tax rate and reason sit between them. For a sale, fill in the tax rate: selling an asset is a taxable transaction like any other, and this is where that tax is recorded. The reason is free text and is the thing an auditor reads.
Depreciate first, then dispose
The screen says it plainly, and it is the one ordering mistake people make: post the due depreciation before disposing of the asset.
The gain or loss on disposal is the difference between what you got and what the asset was still worth on your books. Skip the last month's charge and the book value is too high, so the result is wrong — and it is wrong in the period you are least likely to revisit.
What the disposal did
The asset comes off the register, its accumulated depreciation comes off with it, any cash received is recorded against the account you chose, and the gain or loss lands in the accounts as its own figure.
The asset stays readable in the register's history with its disposal date and reason. You are retiring it, not erasing that you ever owned it.
Disposal is final and is an accountant or manager action. If you retire the wrong asset, the repair is a correcting entry, not an undo — which is a good reason to check the reference on the panel header before pressing anything.
Next, you might want to
- Register a fixed assetPut a vehicle, machine or fit-out on the register so it depreciates month by month instead of hitting one month's accounts.
- Review the journalRead every entry your daily work produced, over a date range you choose, and check it balances.
- Record money in or outEnter cash that moves for a reason no invoice covers — rent, fuel, bank fees — and pay supplier invoices.