The big picture
Spread the cost over the years that get the use.
Buy a ₹6,00,000 machine with a ten-year life and it is not a ₹6,00,000 expense this month. It is an asset worth ₹6,00,000 that becomes worth a little less each month, and that shrinkage — depreciation — is the real cost of using it. The register is where those things live, and where the monthly charge is calculated and posted.
Where it lives
Books & Accounting
The host screen.
More → Books & AccountingFixed Assets tab
The register, the three totals, and Run depreciation.
tab 7 of 7New asset
The form. Also reached by tapping a row.
button on the tabCapitalise a bill
Turn a supplier's bill into an asset.
Vendor bill → ⋮Access needs canAccessSettings. On a phone the More sheet calls the host screen Books.
The register
Three totals, a list, and one warning worth taking seriously.
The tab leads with Gross block (what the assets cost), Accumulated depreciation (written off so far) and Net block (what they are worth). Below is every asset with its number, name, put-to-use date, cost and net book value. There is a CSV download in the header.
Assets are grouped by category — Buildings, Plant & Machinery, Computers, Furniture and so on — and the category is doing more work than it appears to. It sets the useful life, the method, the salvage percentage and which ledger accounts the asset and its depreciation post to. Categories are seeded on first use with Companies Act lives.
If the Balance Sheet's fixed-asset total and the register's net block disagree by even a paisa, an amber banner appears naming both figures. It suggests "An asset capitalised outside the register, or a journal posted straight to a fixed-asset account, will do that." — both are real causes, but the commonest one by far is simpler and the banner does not mention it: an asset left as a draft (§03).
Adding an asset
Two doors: from the bill that bought it, or typed in.
A. From a vendor bill — the tidy way
Open the vendor bill → ⋮ → Capitalise as an asset. The confirmation explains what it is about to do:
"Bill {number} will be recorded as a fixed asset costing ₹X. Its cost moves out of Purchases and onto the register, so it stops being an expense of this month and starts depreciating instead. This can only be done once per bill."
The asset form opens prefilled from the bill — cost, dates, supplier — and the bill is linked, so it cannot be capitalised twice.
Capitalising works on the bill's total taxable value, not a line. A bill that mixes a machine with a box of consumables cannot be split — raise the capital item on its own bill, or add the asset by hand instead.
B. Typed in — for assets you already owned
New asset, then fill the form. Depreciation already booked is how an asset you have owned for three years joins the register at the right point in its life.
Salvage value auto-fills as the category's percentage of the cost, but only while the category is set and only until you type in the salvage box yourself. Enter the cost first and choose the category afterwards and salvage stays at zero — the asset then quietly depreciates to nothing instead of to its residual value. No category is preselected, deliberately.
The form refuses the obvious mistakes by name: "Give the asset a name." · "Pick a category." · "Enter the capitalised cost." · "Must be below the cost." (salvage) · "Enter a life in months." · "Enter a rate between 0 and 100." A grey strip previews the first period: "First period charges ₹X. Prorated from day N."
Putting it on the books
One tick, and it is not reversible from the app.
The form carries a checkbox — "Put it on the books now", on by default — described as: "Depreciation starts posting. The cost and life become fixed." Saving with it ticked makes the asset active, posts its capitalisation journal, and starts it depreciating.
Cost, salvage, useful life, method, put-to-use date and both ledger accounts are frozen. The form then shows: "This asset is on the books, so its cost, life and method are fixed. Depreciation has been posted against them. Dispose of it or write it off to take it off the register." — but disposal and write-off are not built yet (§08). A wrong cost on an active asset can only be corrected by a manual journal. Check the figures before you tick.
A draft counts towards the register's totals but posts no journal, so the Balance Sheet does not know about it — which produces the drift warning from §01, blaming a cause that has nothing to do with it. Either finish the asset and put it on the books, or do not create it yet.
How depreciation is worked out
Two methods, monthly, with one proration rule.
| Method | Monthly charge | Feels like |
|---|---|---|
| Straight line (SLM) | (cost − salvage) ÷ life in months | The same figure every month until it is written down. |
| Written down value (WDV) | A fixed percentage of what is left, converted to a monthly rate | Heavy early, lighter later — the Income Tax pattern. |
- Only the first month is prorated, by days from the put-to-use date. There is no half-year convention and no mid-month convention, and the final month is not prorated.
- The salvage floor is absolute. Each month is clipped so accumulated depreciation lands exactly on
cost − salvage— the last period absorbs all the rounding. An asset can never depreciate past its residual value. - Catch-up is automatic. An asset put to use in April and added to the register in September owes five months, and the next run posts all of them.
The arithmetic is implemented twice — once in the app and once on the server — and both are pinned to the same set of worked examples, so a figure previewed on screen is the figure that posts.
Running depreciation
Preview first. Posting is a separate press.
Fixed Assets tab → Run depreciation. A preview opens, titled with the period, listing every asset and its charge, with a final tag on any asset this period finishes off, and the total. Then Post ₹T.
There is no date picker. The run closes the previous calendar month, so the current month cannot be depreciated until it ends. The first run on a register of older assets will post every missed month at once, in a single journal dated last month-end — a large one-off charge that is arithmetically right but will look odd on a monthly P&L. Expect it, and explain it in the narration if anyone asks.
If there is nothing to do it says so: "Nothing to depreciate for this period. Every active asset is already up to date, or none has been put to use yet." Only active assets are picked up — drafts and fully-depreciated assets are skipped silently.
Posting is refused if the period is closed: "The books are locked on or before YYYY-MM-DD." The preview is allowed either way, so you can always look.
The dialog says a run "can be reversed while it is the latest run", and the server can do it — but no button exists in the app yet. Treat a post as final and check the preview properly.
What reaches the ledger
Three journals, and one of them is a reclass rather than a cost.
| Event | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Capitalise from a bill | The asset account | Purchases — the bill already charged it, so this moves the cost, it does not spend again |
| Capitalise an owned asset | The asset account (gross cost) | Accumulated Depreciation (what is already written off) and Opening Balance Equity (the rest) |
| Depreciation run | Depreciation Expense | Accumulated Depreciation |
Runs are dated the last day of the month they close, and every journal has a fixed identity, so re-running a period overwrites rather than duplicates. Accumulated Depreciation sits under Fixed Assets as a negative, which is why the Balance Sheet shows the net figure.
The credit goes to Purchases. That is right for a machine bought on a normal supplier bill. If the bill's lines were stock, the contra is wrong and nothing stops you — so capitalise bills that bought capital items, not bills that bought inventory.
Traps
Short list, all of them things people have actually done.
- Category before cost — otherwise salvage stays zero (§02).
- Ticking "put it on the books" too early freezes figures you cannot edit and cannot dispose of (§03).
- Leaving assets as drafts guarantees a drift warning that blames the wrong thing (§01).
- Waiting for the current month — the run only ever closes last month (§05).
- Expecting to undo a run — no button (§05).
- The register CSV is not a statutory report. It includes every asset and exports the raw category key. It is a working list, not a Schedule III note.
- Journal labels. Depreciation and capitalisation entries show their raw key (
depreciation) in the Journal tab rather than a friendly label, unlike every other entry. Cosmetic, but it looks like a fault when it is not.
What is not here yet
The first one matters most, because the app implies otherwise.
You cannot sell, scrap or write off an asset. There is no screen, no gain-or-loss posting, and no way to take a row off the register. The locked-asset banner tells you to "dispose of it or write it off" — neither action exists yet. Until it does, an asset sold in the real world stays on the register and keeps depreciating; handle it with a manual journal and a note.
Also still to come: the Fixed Asset Register report in Schedule III layout with PDF export; monthly auto-posting; the Income Tax block-wise WDV report; an asset detail screen with the projected schedule laid out year by year; a categories editor; a Reverse-last-run button; and yearly rather than monthly runs.
Quick reference
The page to keep open at month end.
| Concept | Where / what |
|---|---|
| Getting there | More → Books & Accounting → Fixed Assets tab |
| Numbering | FA/{FY}/{NNN}, prefix overridable |
| Two doors | Vendor bill → ⋮ → Capitalise · or New asset |
| Category sets | Useful life · method · salvage % · ledger accounts |
| Order on the form | Category first, then cost — or salvage stays zero |
| Methods | SLM and WDV, monthly; only the first month prorated |
| Statuses | draft → active → fully_depreciated |
| Run period | Always the end of last month; catches up missed months |
| Preview vs post | Preview is free; Post writes the journal |
| Journal | Dr Depreciation Expense / Cr Accumulated Depreciation |
| Not built | Disposal · write-off · Register report · auto-post · reverse button |
| Permission | canAccessSettings |
The register and the Balance Sheet are the same number seen twice. Every rule here — freezing an active asset, the drift banner, capitalising as a reclass out of Purchases — exists to keep those two in step. When they disagree, something was added to one and not the other.