Fixed assets

The asset register: what you own, what it cost, what it has depreciated, and what it is worth now.

Accounting → Fixed Assets.

The register of what the business owns, with cost, accumulated depreciation and net book value on every line and in total.

Acquiring an asset can start from a bill, so the purchase and the asset are the same event rather than two records that have to agree.

Depreciation runs as a scheduled posting rather than something you remember to do. Which method, and how the tax book differs from the GAAP one, is covered in Depreciation methods and Multi-book accounting.

Disposal posts the gain or loss for you: proceeds against net book value, with the accumulated depreciation cleared out. Doing this by hand is where the classic error lives — removing the cost and forgetting the accumulated depreciation, which leaves the balance sheet wrong by exactly the depreciation taken.

Every asset traces back to the document that created it.