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Depreciation report
Current-year depreciation, accumulated depreciation and net book value for every asset, by straight-line, declining balance, sum-of-years' digits or MACRS, with your fiscal year.
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The Depreciation report works out what your assets are worth on paper. Choose a depreciation method and it calculates, for every asset you paid for, how much is written off this year, how much has been written off in total, and the value left on your books.
The figures match the free depreciation calculator to the cent, so you can enter one asset there to see its full year-by-year schedule.
What an asset needs to appear
An asset only appears on this report when all three of these are true:
- It has an acquisition price, and that price is not zero.
- It has an acquisition date.
- Its category has a useful life set.
This is the first thing to check when an asset you expected is missing. Price and date are recorded in the acquisition section when you add an asset; useful life is set per category under report settings on the custom categories page. An asset that was gifted or donated at no cost has nothing to depreciate, so it will not appear here.
Choosing a method
The method picker at the top of the report switches every figure on the page:
- Straight-line spreads the cost evenly across the asset's useful life. It is what most small and medium organizations use for their books.
- Double-declining balance writes off twice the straight-line rate each year, applied to the value that is left, so more of the cost falls in the early years.
- 150% declining balance works the same way at one and a half times the straight-line rate.
- Sum-of-years' digits also front-loads the cost, less steeply than declining balance: a five-year asset writes off 5/15 of its cost in the first year, 4/15 in the second, and so on.
- MACRS (US tax) applies the IRS percentage tables used on Form 4562.
The method you pick is kept in the page address, so a bookmark or a link sent to a colleague opens the report with the same method.
Reading the table
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Category | The asset's category, which supplies the useful life |
| Asset | The asset tag, manufacturer and model |
| Status | Available, Deployed, or the decommission event that retired it |
| Purchase Date | The acquisition date the calculation runs from |
| Purchase Cost | What you paid |
| Useful Life (Years) | Years, from the category. Shown as Recovery Period under MACRS |
| Current Year Depreciation | The amount written off in the current year |
| Accumulated Depreciation | Everything written off by the end of the current year |
| Net Book Value | Purchase cost less accumulated depreciation: what the asset is worth on paper at the end of the current year |
The salvage value you enter on an asset is what it is expected to be worth at the end of its useful life. Every method except MACRS stops there, so an asset never depreciates below its salvage value.
The month an asset is acquired counts as a full month, and the first and last years are prorated from there rather than counted as full years. Once an asset reaches the end of its useful life, its current-year figure becomes zero and its net book value stops falling.
Method options
Some methods have settings of their own, in the Filters panel:
- Switch to straight-line, for the two declining balance methods, is on by default. Declining balance writes off less every year, so once straight-line over the remaining life would write off more, the calculation switches to it. Turn it off to stay on declining balance throughout, with the final year taking whatever is left down to the salvage value.
- MACRS convention is Half-year by default. Choose Mid-quarter when more than 40% of the cost of the property you placed in service during the tax year was placed in service in its last three months, which is when the IRS requires it.
MACRS
MACRS takes the recovery period from the category's useful life, so set each category's useful life to its MACRS class: 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20 or 39 years. Computers, for example, are 5-year property and office furniture is 7-year property. Assets whose category has any other useful life show a dash under MACRS instead of a figure, and are left blank in the export.
Under MACRS the salvage value is ignored and the full purchase cost is recovered, as the IRS tables require. 39-year property always uses the mid-month convention, based on the month it was placed in service. Section 179 and bonus depreciation are not applied.
Fiscal year
By default the report works in calendar years. If your financial year starts in another month, choose it under Fiscal year starts in in the Filters panel. The current-year, accumulated and net book value figures then follow your fiscal year, and a badge such as FY2027 above the table shows which year you are looking at.
Fiscal years are named for the year they end in, so July 2026 to June 2027 is FY2027. MACRS always works in calendar tax years, so the fiscal year setting is hidden while MACRS is selected.
Filters
Filter by category, by status — Available, Deployed, and each of your decommission events such as Sold or Retired — and by a start and end date, which narrows the report to assets acquired in that window.
Every column can be sorted, including the calculated ones. Export to Excel downloads the report with your method, its options, your fiscal year and your filters applied, and the file name includes the method.