Calculating Asset Units Used

You can track an asset's life in units, rather than in years and months. Before you can depreciate any asset with a life in units, you must enter the units used for that asset since the last time depreciation occurred.

For example, a company can track the estimated life of an electric forklift in machine hours. In one period, the forklift used a total of 150 machine hours out of an estimated useful life of 72,120 units. Before the accountant at the company can calculate depreciation for this period, he must record that 150 units were used for the asset.

You record units used for assets in the Record Asset Units Used (tffam1145s000) subsession and for books in the Record Asset Units Used (tffam1245m000) subsession of the Record Asset Units Used (tffam1145m000) session.

The current units shown for the asset represent the total units used to date for the asset in the default general ledger book. The number of units you enter is the new cumulative total of units used to the current date. LN uses this value to replace the previous units used for the asset in all of its books.

For example, to increase the units used by 250 - from 10,500 to 10,750 - you enter 10,750 as the new units used and LN overwrites the previous value.

If you leave a row blank, LN interprets this as zero units used. If you enter a number of used units that is equal to or greater than the current life in units that the asset contains in any book, LN interprets this to mean that the asset is fully used in that book. The next time you calculate depreciation, LN fully depreciates the asset, but does not overwrite the previous value with zero.