Asset Depreciation Overview
Your rental fleet loses value every year you own it — and your accountant needs to record exactly how much. Asset Depreciation does that maths for you. Rentablez tracks each stock unit’s cost, applies a depreciation method every month, and always knows what the asset is worth on the books today. When the financial year closes, you export the whole register as a spreadsheet or a Tally file and hand it straight to your accountant.
The defaults follow Schedule II of the Companies Act 2013, and periods are aligned to the Indian Financial Year (1 April – 31 March), so the numbers line up with how Indian businesses file.
Rentablez keeps the depreciation register — it is not a full accounting book. It calculates and stores the numbers, then exports them for you to import into Tally, Excel, or your accountant’s software. See Export Depreciation to Tally / CSV.
Where to Find It
There are three places depreciation lives in the app:
| Page | Where | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| Asset Depreciation | Main menu → /asset-depreciation | The register — every asset’s method, book value, and status |
| Asset Disposals | Main menu → /asset-disposals | History of assets you’ve sold, scrapped, lost, donated, or retired |
| Depreciation Defaults | Settings → Depreciation Defaults | Org-wide and per-category default rules (Schedule II) |
Key Ideas
A few terms show up throughout the register — here’s what they mean in plain language:
- Capitalized cost — what the asset cost you to put into service. Defaults to the purchase price.
- Salvage value — what you expect the asset to still be worth at the end of its useful life.
- Useful life — how long the asset is expected to earn its keep, entered in months.
- Accumulated depreciation — the total value written off so far across all the months it’s been depreciating.
- Book value — capitalized cost minus accumulated depreciation. This is what the asset is worth on the books right now.
Two Depreciation Methods
When you set up an asset you pick one of two methods:
| Method | How it writes down value | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Straight-line (SLM) | The same amount every month across the useful life | Assets that lose value evenly |
| Written-Down Value (WDV) | A fixed percentage of the remaining book value each period | Assets that lose value faster early on |
WDV requires a depreciation rate (% per year). The settings drawer won’t let you save a WDV asset without one. Straight-line assets don’t need a rate — the useful life drives the calculation.
How Depreciation Gets Posted
Rentablez posts depreciation automatically once a month. Each posting is locked — it becomes a permanent line in that asset’s schedule and feeds the year-end export.
If you’d rather not wait for the monthly run — say you’ve just set up a batch of assets and want the numbers to catch up — use Run depreciation now at the top right of the register to recalculate and post on the spot.
Run depreciation now requires the Asset Depreciation — Write permission. Users with view-only access won’t see the button.
Reading the Register
Each row is one stock unit with depreciation tracking. Use the search box to find an asset by name or tag, and narrow the list with the two filter dropdowns:
- Status — All statuses, Active, Fully depreciated, Disposed, or Paused.
- Method — All methods, Straight-line (SLM), or Written-Down Value (WDV).
The status tag tells you where each asset stands:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Active | Depreciating normally each month |
| Paused | Setup exists but no depreciation is being posted |
| Fully depreciated | Book value has reached its salvage value; nothing left to write off |
| Disposed | The asset has been sold, scrapped, lost, donated, or retired |
From each row you can open the asset’s Schedule (the chart and posted/projected entries), edit its Settings, or Dispose it. See Using the Depreciation Register for the full tour.
Getting Started
If you’re setting this up for the first time, the fastest path is:
- Seed the Schedule II defaults in Settings → Depreciation Defaults, so each asset category gets a sensible useful life and method out of the box.
- Bulk-apply those defaults to your existing assets from the register, instead of configuring one at a time.
- Fine-tune individual assets where the cost, salvage, or method differs from the default.
- Let the monthly posting run — or Run depreciation now to catch up immediately.
- At year-end, export the financial year to CSV or Tally XML.
Setting up defaults, editing an asset, running depreciation, and disposing all require the Asset Depreciation — Write permission. Viewing the register and disposals list requires Asset Depreciation — Read.