Prepaid expense amortization

Spread a prepaid cost over the months it covers, one posting per period.

Accounting → Amortization schedules.

When you pay twelve months of insurance up front, the whole amount is not this month's expense. It is an asset that becomes an expense a month at a time.

Setting one up: name it, choose the prepaid asset account it currently sits in, the expense account it should become, the total, the starting month and the term.

The schedule: IntuBu builds every period slice immediately so you can inspect it before anything posts. Slices always sum to the total exactly — a £10,000 cost over 7 months does not lose a penny to rounding.

Running it: Run amortization for a period previews first. Review, then post. Each posting is DR expense / CR prepaid asset.

The Prepaids register (Accounting → Prepaids, /accounting/prepaids) lists every schedule with what has been expensed and what remains, offers Preview this month for the whole book and posts the month in one step, and shows a tie-out: the schedules' remaining balances against the prepaid asset account in the ledger, with Ties to the ledger or Does not tie and the figures behind it.

Safeguards: a period cannot post twice. The schedule closes itself once fully recognised.

This is the expense-side mirror of revenue recognition (Accounting → Revenue recognition), which does the same thing for deferred revenue.