Finance & Depreciation
The Finance page is where equipment stops being a list of things and becomes a set of numbers somebody signs. It holds one book per asset, charges depreciation one period at a time, and keeps every posted period on the record permanently — because a figure that reaches a general ledger has to be defensible a year later, by somebody who was not in the room.
ams/accounting). One
page, four tabs — Depreciation, Estimates & Adjustments,
Disposals and Valuation. Opening it needs the Assets: Finance permit;
everything you can actually do there needs a further permit of its own, listed under
Safekeep: Finance.
What a book is, and where its numbers come from
A financial book is one asset's valuation record: what it cost, when it started depreciating, how long it is expected to last, what it will still be worth at the end, and what it is worth today. Everything on the Accounting page is computed from books — the asset register itself holds no valuation.
Books are not typed in by hand. When a book is opened, its starting figures are taken from what the register already knows:
| Book input | Taken from | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | The asset's Cost field | The capitalised amount being depreciated. A capital addition can raise it later; nothing else does. |
| Placed in service | The asset's Purchase date | The month depreciation starts counting. |
| Useful life (months) | The depreciation profile attached to the asset | How long the asset is expected to be of use. |
| Residual value | The profile's minimum value | The floor. Depreciation never takes an asset below it. |
| Method | Straight-line | The only method this release computes. A book set to anything else is left alone rather than charged with the wrong arithmetic. |
| Convention | Full month (default) | How the first month is treated — see conventions. |
Opening books
There are two ways a book comes into existence, and both are safe to repeat — an asset that already has one is never given a second:
-
Ensure books — on demand
The Valuation tab carries an Ensure books button. It walks the register in batches with a running console, opening a book for every asset that qualifies and telling you plainly how many it skipped and why. Use it after a bulk import, or after fixing a batch of missing costs.
-
The monthly job — automatically
On the 1st of each month the Compute asset depreciation job opens any missing books before it does anything else, so an asset registered mid-month is picked up without anybody remembering to press a button. See Cron jobs.
The monthly cycle
A run is one book set, for one month. It moves through five states, and each one exists because a different mistake is caught there:
| State | What just happened | What it catches |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | The period has been opened. No numbers yet. | — |
| Calculated | Every eligible book has been charged and the run's totals are struck. | A book with bad inputs — it shows up as a warning or a missing line rather than a wrong charge. |
| Reviewed | Somebody has read the numbers and said they look right. | The wrong period, an unexpected total, an asset that should not be there. |
| Approved | Somebody with the authority has signed them off. | Authority. This is the decision, not the arithmetic. |
| Posted | The charge has been written into the books. | Nothing — this is the commitment. From here, correction means reversal. |
Preparing and calculating
Press Prepare run on the Depreciation tab and pick the book and the month. Before you commit, the form tells you how many assets are eligible and roughly what the charge will be, so an obviously wrong month is caught before it becomes a run.
Calculating happens on the run's own page, in batches with a live console — a few hundred books at a time so a large register never depends on one long request finishing. You can leave the run calculated and come back to it; you can also recalculate any time up to approval, which is what you do after fixing a book's inputs mid-month.
Reading a run
The run page opens with the roll-forward strip, which is the whole month in one line:
opening + additions − expense − impairment + disposals = closingBeside it is a Balanced badge. If that identity does not close, the run says so and cannot be posted — it stays approved and re-calculable instead. An out-of-balance posting is corrupt arithmetic written into balances where nothing but the nightly reconciliation would ever notice it, so refusing is the only safe answer.
Underneath, the lines table gives one row per asset: opening value, what moved, and closing value, with column totals for the whole run rather than just the page you are looking at.
Posting
Posting is the moment the month becomes fact. In one step it writes each book's new accumulated depreciation and net book value, stamps the book with the period just closed, applies any approved impairments and capital additions that belonged to the period, and records the charge on each asset's activity feed.
Correcting a posted period
Reverse creates a second run that is the mirror image of the first: every movement negated, posted immediately, with a reason you are required to type. The original is marked reversed. Nothing is deleted and nothing is overwritten — an auditor sees the charge, the correction, and why.
Two neighbouring actions are easy to confuse:
| Action | When | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Cancel | Any time before posting | Abandons the run and releases the month, so a replacement run can be prepared for the same period. There is no "un-approve": an approved run that turns out to be wrong is cancelled, not walked backwards, so its approval timestamp never ends up attached to numbers that changed afterwards. |
| Lock | After posting | Declares the period closed to correction. A locked period can no longer be reversed — the fix belongs in a later month. Locking can also happen automatically once a posted period has aged past the configured number of days. |
Impairments, estimate changes and capital additions
Three things change a book outside the normal monthly charge, and all three go through the same governed path on the Estimates & Adjustments tab: somebody requests it with a reason and supporting files, somebody else approves it, and only then does it affect anything.
| Adjustment | What it says | When it takes effect |
|---|---|---|
| Impairment | This asset is worth materially less than the books say — it is obsolete, damaged, idle, uneconomic to repair, or the market has moved. You record the amount, the indicator, and the recoverable amount. | When a run applies it. The write-down appears as a movement on that period's line, so the money is always attached to a period somebody posted. |
| Estimate change | The original expectation was wrong or has changed: a different useful life, a different residual value, a different convention. | Immediately on approval. It changes the inputs future periods are computed from, and the next calculation must already see them. |
| Capital addition | Money spent that adds to the asset rather than maintaining it — a memory upgrade, a rebuild. | When a run applies it. It raises the carrying amount before that period's charge is struck. |
The annual estimate review
A useful life set once and never revisited quietly becomes a fiction: laptops kept five years instead of three, machines replaced early, residual values from a market that has moved. So each book carries the date its estimate was last confirmed, and once a full cycle has passed without one, the book joins the Review due list on the Estimates tab.
Reviewing is not the same as changing. If the estimate is still right, press Mark reviewed — that is a positive statement that somebody looked, and it is what clears the book from the list. If it is not right, request an estimate change; approving one records the review at the same time.
A monthly reminder chases books that have gone unconfirmed. It chases each book once per cycle, not every month, so the reminder stays worth reading.
The Valuation tab
The book register: one row per asset with cost, accumulated depreciation, net book value, life, in-service date, the last posted period and status — with totals across the whole filtered set, not just the visible page. Filter it by status, or by review due, to get the list you actually need.
| Row action | What it does |
|---|---|
| History | Every posted line for that one asset, oldest to newest — the valuation story of a single machine. |
| Edit inputs | Corrects the book's starting figures. Available only before the first posting: once a period has been posted against a book, its inputs are part of a signed calculation and change through an estimate change instead. |
| Mark reviewed | Records that the estimate was confirmed today. |
What a book's status is telling you
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Active | Depreciating normally. |
| Fully depreciated | The asset has reached its residual floor. It stops being charged — but it may well still be in daily use, which is a finding worth acting on (see the reports below). |
| Impaired | An impairment has been applied. |
| Non-depreciable | Deliberately not charged — land, or an asset whose method is set to none. |
| Suspended | Paused. No charge is computed while it stays this way. |
| Disposed | Closed by a completed disposal. No future run touches it. |
A note on the first and last month
The convention decides how the month an asset arrives in is treated. Full month — the default — charges the arrival month in full. Next month starts the following month. Mid month counts the arrival month in full when the asset arrived on or before the 15th, and as a half otherwise.
Whichever you choose, the total charged over the asset's whole life is identical: cost less residual, to the last centavo. The convention shifts when the charge falls, never how much there is. The final period absorbs any rounding remainder, so a book always lands exactly on its residual value rather than a few centavos away from it.
Where the numbers surface
Five finance reports read straight from posted books and runs — Safekeep → Reports:
| Report | Answers |
|---|---|
| Depreciation Roll-Forward | One row per posted period: opening, movements, closing, and whether it balanced. The report a reviewer opens first, and each row links through to its run. |
| Book Value Register | What everything is worth right now, with totals. |
| Fully Depreciated but Still in Use | Assets carrying no value that somebody is nonetheless using. The classic replacement-planning and understated-asset finding. |
| Impairments | Every write-down that has been applied, with its indicator and reason. |
| Disposal Gain / Loss | What leaving cost or earned, per completed disposal. |
Who can do what
Finance is split into narrow permits on purpose: the point of the workflow is that different people hold different steps.
| Permit | Lets somebody… |
|---|---|
| Assets: Finance | Open the Accounting page and read everything on it. Required by everybody below. |
| Finance: Prepare & calculate depreciation | Prepare a run, calculate it, mark it reviewed, cancel it. |
| Finance: Approve depreciation | Approve a calculated, reviewed run. |
| Finance: Post / reverse / lock depreciation | Commit a run, reverse a posted one, close a period. |
| Finance: Manage books & estimates | Edit book inputs, request and approve estimate changes and capital additions, mark estimates reviewed. |
| Finance: Record impairment | Request a write-down. |
The full reference, including the disposal permits, is in Permissions & Roles.