How to track depreciation?

[Derek Atkins]

Sorry, there /could/ be income involved..  I am not an accountant,
so I /do/ sometimes get this wrong.  ;)   You are correct that
there probably is not any Income, it's just an asset transfer.

-derek

marc at osmium.mv.net writes:

> Hello Derek -
>
> Thanks for the follow up. What you say makes sense to me, with one 
> curiosity. The "Income:Auto Sale" bothers me, to some extent, in that I 
> don't personally believe that any "Income" occured. It is really an asset 
> transfer from a physical asset to a cash asset, isn't it? So to that end, 
> the split would be between Equity and Assets, correct?
>
> Thanks in advance - Marc
>
> On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Derek Atkins wrote:
>
>> If you're not a business then technically you can't depreciate the
>> car.  When you sell the car, you create a split transaction.  In
>> the asset you reduce by the full (original) value of the car, then
>> the sale value goes into Income:Auto Sale, and then rest goes into
>> Equity:Capital Depreciation.  I don't think you can count is as a
>> capital loss.
>>
>> Maybe an accountant will chime in?
>>
>> -derek
>>
>> marc at osmium.mv.net writes:
>>
>>> Hello -
>>>
>>> I own a car, which when I purchased it, I transferred the monies used to
>>> pay for it from my checking account to an asset account "car". Several
>>> years have past, and now it is time to sell the car. The amount I will
>>> receive for the car will be significantly less than what I paid. My
>>> questions are:
>>>
>>> 1) Should I have been tracking depreciation on some regular basis over
>>>    the past years, to properly reflect its current value in net-worth
>>>    statements? If so, how is that done?
>>>
>>> 2) Now that the car will be sold, how should I account for the money that
>>>    I receive (I presume it isn't income), and how do I account for the
>>>    difference of sold-value versus asset value on the books?
>>>
>>> I presume that the above questions are general, in that they are true for
>>> all assets that are tracked and/or later sold (at profit or loss).
>>
>> --
>>       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>>       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>>       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>>       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>>
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-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available