Depreciating Asset Books

You depreciate assets by book when you want to record an asset's cost against revenues for one or more but not all of an asset's related books. When you depreciate assets by book, you indicate the period and year through which LN must calculate depreciation and the books in which depreciation must occur. LN determines which of the indicated assets and books are eligible for depreciation in the selected periods, then calculates the appropriate depreciation amounts.

LN calculates depreciation separately for each of an asset's related books. You can depreciate an asset in all of its books at once, or you can depreciate the asset in one or more of its related books.

An asset can depreciate in a book only until its remaining cost is equal to its salvage value, or until its remaining life is equal to zero. Assets with a negative cost accumulate negative depreciation and cannot depreciate past zero. When an asset reaches these limits, the asset and its related books stop depreciating.

For each book, LN first determines whether it is time to depreciate. It does this by looking at the depreciation frequency and at the last depreciated date. If it is a period in which the asset book is supposed to depreciate, and no depreciation has already occurred in this period, LN calculates depreciation. For example, if the frequency indicates that the asset was supposed to depreciate in January, February, and March and it is currently April, LN checks the last depreciation date to see if depreciation has been run through March. If not, it runs it for all periods that need to have it run. If the general ledger is closed for any of the periods, LN books the depreciation as one large transaction to the current period. However, if the general ledger is open, one transaction is created for each period.