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 _______________________________________________ gnucash-user mailing list gnucash-user@gnucash.org To update your subscription preferences or to unsubscribe: https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-user If you are using Nabble or Gmane, please see https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Mailing_Lists for more information. ----- Please remember to CC this list on all your replies. You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
