Fixed assets
Capital equipment on the books: acquired, depreciated, and retired.
A fixed asset is a piece of capital equipment you capitalize and depreciate rather than expense: a press, a CNC, a forklift. It's an accounting record of value over time, distinct from the that represents the same machine on the floor. Every asset belongs to an , which supplies the general-ledger accounts it posts to.
Lifecycle
Acquiring
An asset comes onto the books two ways, both starting at Draft:
- Register one you already own: supply its acquisition cost and depreciation start date, and it moves to Active. No money posts; you're recording something you have.
- Buy one through purchasing: a line of type Fixed Asset that, when the receipt posts, debits the asset account, adds the cost to the asset, and flips it to Active.
The purchase-receipt path activates the asset and posts its acquisition entry only when accounting is enabled for the company. Cost is added cumulatively, so an asset can accrue value across several receipts; with accounting off, the line is received but the asset is left in Draft.
Depreciating
runs as a monthly batch you trigger. There's no background poster. You create a run for a period, Carbon pulls every Active asset and computes each charge, you review it as a draft, then post: debit depreciation expense, credit accumulated depreciation. Carbon keeps a separate tax book too, including , when tax depreciation is enabled. When an asset's reaches its residual, posting flips it to Fully Depreciated.
Book depreciation follows the asset's method: , , or units of production.
Selling vs. disposing
An Active or Fully Depreciated asset leaves the books two different ways:
| Sell | Dispose | |
|---|---|---|
| Who | A sales action | An accounting action |
| What happens | Drafts a sales order for the asset at its net book value | Posts a write-off: clears accumulated depreciation, removes the asset at cost |
| Asset status | Unchanged (stays Active) | Disposed |
| Money | Collected through the invoice, like any sale | Remaining book value booked as a loss |
Selling and disposing are not two names for one thing. Selling hands the asset to the normal quote-to-cash flow at book value and leaves it on the books; disposing retires it directly as a write-off. today is scrapping at a loss. There's no proceeds-based gain calculation wired up.
A fixed asset is not the same record as a work center. The machine you schedule production on and the machine you depreciate are tracked independently. Carbon keeps no link between them.