Depreciation is a method of allocating the cost of a fixed asset over its estimated useful life.  Governmental and proprietary fund types need to be depreciated. Capital assets should be depreciated over their estimated useful lives unless they are either 

Fields Involved in Tracking Depreciation

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However the Inventory application uses a slightly different calculation from the straight-line method.The total depreciation as of the end of the last fiscal year (called Life-to-date Depreciation) is stored for each item. The system uses the following calculation for annual depreciation. The depreciation for a part of a year will be the annual depreciation pro-rated for the number of months involved.

This formula protects the calculation from being sensitive to changes in original cost, life expectancy, etc. Thus, if an improvement (additional acquisition) is done to an item, the amount of depreciation taken from that point on will reflect the increase or decrease to the original cost. Depreciation already taken in prior years will not be affected.  Listed below are two examples of calculating depreciation for the life of the items. 

Tag #1: $10,000 original cost depreciated over 5 years acquired 01/01/2015 (FY15) with a salvage value of 1000.00.  The item should be completely depreciated in five years.

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