[GNC] An automated depreciation calculator would be really helpful.

David Carlson david.carlson.417 at gmail.com
Wed Dec 8 19:47:29 EST 2021


That would be nice, but, as you opened the discussion with the note that
you use spreadsheets to perform the calculations, you realize that
different political jurisdictions have different accounting standards, and
to build code in GnuCash to accommodate all the possibilities and keep it
up to date would be even worse than trying to keep the tax report up to
date for the United States Federal Taxes, which AFAIK is done by one
devoted individual because he makes it his mission.

I do try to track depreciation for two automobiles but I calculate the
numbers in a spreadsheet and manually enter annual transactions as that is
sufficient for my intellectual curiosity.

If you want to make that your mission the developers would be able to help
you with the mechanics of writing the code if you can do the calculations.

On Wed, Dec 8, 2021 at 6:35 PM Dr. David Kirkby <
drkirkby at kirkbymicrowave.co.uk> wrote:

> A friend of mine bought some Excel spreadsheets for his company accounts.
> He has used them for many years and finds them good. He has suggested I use
> them, but I'm not keen on that idea. At any point in time he can see
> exactly what the depreciation of an item is, and so exactly when the value
> has fallen to zero.
>
> I read about depreciation in GnuCash at
>
> https://cvs.gnucash.org/docs/C/gnucash-guide/chapter_dep.html
>
> but it seems rather limited. The last paragraph on this page
>
> https://cvs.gnucash.org/docs/C/gnucash-guide/dep_accounts1.html
>
> says
>
> "The actual input of the depreciation amounts is done by hand every
> accounting period. There is no way in *GnuCash* (as of yet) to perform the
> depreciation scheme calculations automatically, or to input the values
> automatically into the appropriate accounts. However, since an accounting
> period is typically one year, this really is not much work to do by hand."
>
> I don't think it's true to say it's not much work to do. I know my
> accountant says one should start depreciating from the day something goes
> into service, but he uses a different scheme, which is good enough. If an
> item is purchased before the halfway through the month, he considers it
> purchased on the 1st of that month, and if after 50% of the way though the
> month, he considers it purchased the following next month. The errors in
> this should be small.
>
> So each time an asset is purchased, one needs to start depreciating it from
> then. It's not true to say this is just done once per year.
>
> Of course, I'm well aware that many people will have suggestions on how to
> improve the software, and the developer's time is limited. But some
> automated way of depreciating items would be very useful. As they say, if
> you don't ask you will not get, so there's no harm in asking!
>
> Dave
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-- 
David Carlson


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