Running monthly depreciation

Accounting → Assets → Fixed Assets → Run monthly depreciation charges each asset once a month. What a second run does, how to redo a month, and what to do about duplicates posted before.

Run monthly depreciation, on Accounting → Assets → Fixed Assets, charges straight-line depreciation for the month to every active asset with value left to depreciate, and posts it as one journal. The ACCT-DEPRECIATION batch job, which runs it on a schedule, follows exactly the same rule.

Once per asset per month

• Each asset is charged once for a month, however often the button is pressed or the job runs.
• Running it again says when the month was already posted and under which journal, and posts nothing new.
• An asset added since the last run is charged on the next one; the assets already charged are not charged again.
• A closed fiscal period is refused before anything is written. Reopen the period first if the charge really belongs in it.

Redoing a month

1. Find the month’s depreciation journal (its memo reads "Monthly depreciation" and the month) and reverse it from Accounting → Journals with Reverse.
2. Correct whatever was wrong — an asset’s cost, its life, its start date.
3. Run monthly depreciation again. The reversed charge is released, the asset’s accumulated depreciation is given back, and the month is charged afresh.

An asset capitalised from Accounting → Assets → Assets to Capitalise is charged from its in-service date like any other. See From a capital purchase to the asset register.