[GNC] Is it reasonable to have sub-accounts under Equity:Fixed Assets?

[Adrien Monteleone]

On 1/17/23 10:00 AM, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
> That would require a *lot* of accounts, but I guess it makes it blindingly
> obvious what the items are. I was hoping to try to automate the
> depreciation with the Scheduled Transactions in GnuCash. I've not used them
> yet, but I assume that it would be much more tricky if things are in many
> different accounts. But maybe I am wrong.
> 
> For the purposes of submitting to Companies House, I only need the total of
> fixed assets - no breakdown is necessary. If the company was inspected, I
> assume that inspectors would want to see a breakdown.

Maybe I misunderstood, I thought you wanted to track the items' values & 
depreciation separately. By all means, otherwise lump them in one 
account. (you can of course make separate transactions for each item, 
which would allow you to run Transaction Reports filtered on each item 
if needed)

> What would you do for transactions that have already been written off? I
> was tempted to add those, as the company has been going for 8 years, so
> whether I add 8 years of assets or 5 does not make much difference - am
> extra 55 items.

I don't see why there would be any need to. If they are already zero, 
they don't need to enter the book at all as far as I can tell.

Would it be sensible to create a vendor in GnuCash called
> "Written off" and let all things that are written off be purchased from
> "Written Off"? I don't really want to enter a new vendor for everything
> purchased years ago, and already written off. That would mean filling in
> the names and addresses of 55 more vendors, which would be a bit too
> time-consuming for my liking.


These were purchased long ago and you're just carrying forward their 
remaining value. This should be no different than any other Opening 
Balance transactions.

Just do something similar to the example transactions in Chris' reply.

As he noted, if you want to record the original price, do that as an 
Opening Balance, then with the same date, make another transaction 
reflecting the currently accumulated depreciation. The end result would 
be the present value as of the date you opened the GnuCash book.

Then continue to depreciate as instructed by your accountant. None of 
this involves Vendors or Bills.


Regards,
Adrien