A fixed asset is something the business owns that lasts more than a year: a delivery van, computers, equipment, furniture, improvements to a building. Its cost is not an expense the day you buy it. It is used up over the years, and depreciation is the part used up each month.
Open Accounting > Fixed Assets. Across the top: what the assets in use cost, the depreciation taken so far, their book value, and what is due this month. How this works beside the title opens a guide with the steps, a worked example drawn year by year, and the entries TaDa Books makes. It stays closed until you open it.
What the register does
The register never touches the purchase: you record that as usual, on a fixed asset account. It adds what the books cannot do on their own:
- Buy it onto an asset account. A bill, check or card charge with its line on a fixed asset account such as Vehicles or Equipment, not on an expense.
- Register it. The purchase shows up under To register. Press Register and say how long it lasts, the method, and the accounts.
- Post depreciation. Under Depreciation, press Post depreciation: one entry a month moves that month's share of the cost to the expense, and the book value drops by the same amount.
- Dispose when it leaves. Record the sale money as a deposit to a clearing account, then open the asset and press Dispose.
Worked example: a $30,000 van over 5 years
You buy a delivery van for $30,000 on January 2. In the asset window: Straight line, Useful life 60 months, Full month, End value $0. That is $500 a month, $6,000 a year. After three years you sell it for $14,000.
| | Cash | Profit and loss | Depreciation taken | Book value | |---|---|---|---|---| | Bought, January year 1 | -$30,000 | none | $0 | $30,000 | | End of year 1 | none | $6,000 expense | $6,000 | $24,000 | | End of year 2 | none | $6,000 expense | $12,000 | $18,000 | | End of year 3 | none | $6,000 expense | $18,000 | $12,000 | | Sold, January year 4 | +$14,000 | $2,000 gain | comes off | off the books |
Over the three years the profit and loss carries $18,000 of depreciation less the $2,000 gain: $16,000, exactly the cash it cost you ($30,000 out, $14,000 back). Expensing the van when bought would give the same total, but year 1 would look $24,000 worse and the sale year $12,000 better.
The entries TaDa Books makes
| When, and who | Debit | Credit | |---|---|---| | You buy the van | Vehicles $30,000 | Bank (or Accounts Payable) $30,000 | | TaDa Books, each month end | Depreciation $500 | Accumulated Depreciation $500 | | You record the sale money | Bank $14,000 | Asset sale clearing $14,000 | | TaDa Books, on Dispose | Accumulated Depreciation $18,000 and Asset sale clearing $14,000 | Vehicles $30,000 and Gain or Loss on Sale of Assets $2,000 |
The figures are an invented example.
Put an asset in the register
The purchase is already in your books: the bill, check or journal put the cost on a fixed asset account. The register adds the schedule and the entries the books cannot make on their own.
- To register lists every purchase on a fixed asset account that no asset claims yet. Press Register and the cost, date and account come filled in. One purchase can become several assets (three laptops on one bill); what is left stays on the list.
- New asset adds one by hand, for something bought before your books started in TaDa Books.
On the asset window's Details:
- What it is: the name, an optional type (Vehicles, Computers) that fills in the accounts and terms for you, and a serial number or VIN.
- What it cost and where that sits: the date, the cost, and the account and class the purchase used.
- How it depreciates: the method, the useful life in months, how the first and last months count, when it starts, what it will be worth at the end, and the accounts the monthly entry uses.
- Taken before TaDa Books: for an asset you owned before, the depreciation already taken and the month it runs through. TaDa Books carries on from there.
Schedule shows every month of the asset's life, worked out as you type, and marks the months already posted.
The methods
- Straight line: the same amount every month. A $12,000 van over 5 years is $200 a month.
- Declining balance: more in the early years, less later. Each fiscal year takes a fixed share of the book value at the start of that year (double the straight-line rate unless you set one; for 150% declining balance set 150 divided by the years, so 10% over 15 years), spread evenly over the year's months. It switches to straight line once that gives more, so the life ends exactly at the end value. Your fiscal year comes from Settings > Books.
- No depreciation: land, and anything that does not wear out.
How the first and last months count: Full month (the starting month in full, the last month not at all), Mid month (half a month at each end, the usual choice for rental buildings), Actual days, Half year (the first fiscal year takes half a year whatever month it was bought, and the life ends half a year into its last), or Mid quarter (use counts from the middle of the fiscal quarter it was bought in). With Half year or Mid quarter the year's amount is spread from the month it was bought, and the month it leaves takes nothing.
Matching the IRS tables. Set an asset up the way a table in IRS Publication 946 describes it and the books follow that table year by year: 5-year equipment is Declining balance, 5 years, Half year (20%, 32%, 19.2%, 11.52%, 11.52%, 5.76%); a rental building is Straight line, 27.5 years, Mid month. These are still your books' figures: section 179, bonus depreciation and anything else only your tax return uses stay with your tax preparer.
Run depreciation
Depreciation shows what every asset owes up to the month you pick. Press Post depreciation and TaDa Books writes one journal entry per month, dated the last day of that month, so each month's profit and loss carries its share.
- Run it every month, or once at year end. The totals are the same either way.
- A month the books are locked for is never changed. What it would have taken goes into the first open month instead.
- If you correct an asset's cost or life after it was depreciated, nothing is rewritten. The next run posts the difference.
- Undo on the latest run takes it back (its entries are voided) while its months are open.
- The entries belong to the register. To change one, undo the run or correct the asset. Editing or voiding the entry by hand is refused, and it cannot be memorized, so it never posts twice.
If depreciation was already typed in by hand for some months, enter that amount under Taken before TaDa Books, or the first run takes it again. The preview marks any amount that catches up earlier months.
Sell or scrap an asset
Open the asset and press Dispose. Enter the day it left and what you got for it (0 if it was scrapped or given away). TaDa Books works out the result before you post it:
- the depreciation up to the day it left,
- its book value then,
- and the gain or loss: what you got, less what it was still worth on the books.
The sale money itself comes in as its own deposit or invoice. Record that to a clearing account, or to Other Income, and pick the same account under Where the sale money was recorded. TaDa Books moves the money out of there, takes off the asset's cost and all its depreciation, and books the gain or loss.
If the sale went on an invoice to Sales by mistake, pick Sales as that account. The books come out right, but sales reports, and any sales tax on that invoice, still count it as a sale.
Undo disposal puts the asset back in use while the date is open.
Reports
- Register as of a date: every asset held then, with its cost, depreciation and book value. It ties to the balance sheet for the same date.
- Roll-forward for a period, by type: what you started with, what was bought, what left, the depreciation, and what you ended with. This is the schedule accountants ask for at year end.
- Ledger check: the register's totals against what the ledger holds, account by account. A difference means an asset bought but not registered yet, depreciation typed by hand, a purchase voided after its asset was registered, or depreciation taken before TaDa Books that is not in these books.
Every table prints and downloads as PDF, Excel or CSV. The books download also carries the register as fixed-assets.csv, and a restored copy brings the whole register back.
Book figures, not tax figures
These are your books' numbers. Tax depreciation follows its own rules: in the US, for example, the IRS tables (MACRS), section 179 and bonus depreciation can deduct much more in the first year, and other countries have their own allowances. Your tax preparer works those out, so confirm with them. The Income tax report says the same beside its depreciation line.
Switching a TaDa Books report to Cash basis does not expense an asset when it is paid. The purchase sits on a fixed asset account, a balance sheet account, on both bases, and the depreciation and disposal entries are journal entries, which both bases count.