Acquire and depreciate
Job costing followed the money a job spends. The books also carry the machines that do the building. Carbon tracks those as : a press, a CNC, a forklift, anything you capitalize and rather than expense. These last two chapters follow one asset from the day it lands on the books to the day it leaves them.
A fixed asset is an accounting record, not a production resource. It belongs to an , which carries the general-ledger accounts every asset of that kind posts to: the asset account, accumulated depreciation, depreciation expense, and the accounts used when it's written off.
A fixed asset is not the same record as a work center.
The machine you schedule production on is a ; the machine you depreciate is a fixed asset. Carbon keeps these independent (there's no link between them), so the same physical press can be a work center on the floor and a fixed asset in the books without the two being wired together.
Onto the books
An asset comes onto the books one of two ways, and both start at "Draft".
Register one you already have. Create the asset, then register it, supplying its acquisition cost, acquisition date, and the date depreciation should start. Registering moves it to "Active". No money posts; you're recording something you already own.
Buy one through purchasing. Put a "Fixed Asset" line on a purchase order pointed at the asset, then receive it. When the receipt posts, and only if accounting is enabled, Carbon debits the asset account, credits goods-received-not-invoiced, adds the cost to the asset, stamps the dates, and flips it from "Draft" to "Active". Because the cost is added, an asset can accumulate value across several receipts.
Receiving activates the asset only when accounting is on.
The purchase-receipt path posts the acquisition entry and the Draft → Active flip inside the same gate as every other ledger posting. With accounting off, the PO line is received but the asset itself is left untouched. Register it manually instead.
Depreciate it
Once an asset is "Active", it depreciates. Carbon runs depreciation as a monthly batch you trigger — there's no background job quietly posting in the night. You create a depreciation run for a period, Carbon pulls every active asset and computes each one's charge, and you review it as a "Draft" before posting.
The book charge follows the asset's method (, , or units of production), and posting the run debits depreciation expense and credits accumulated depreciation, period by period.
Depreciation is computed at run time, reviewed, then posted.
Each run's amounts are calculated when you create it and held as a draft, so you can check the period's charges before they hit the ledger. When an asset's reaches its , posting flips it to "Fully Depreciated" and it stops accruing.
Two books at once
The depreciation you report on the books and the depreciation you claim for tax rarely match, so Carbon keeps both. Every asset runs a book schedule and a separate tax schedule, each free to use its own method, the tax side including full with the IRS property-class tables. The two accumulate independently against the same asset.
With tax depreciation enabled, posting a run can also book the deferred tax the gap between the two creates, so that timing difference shows up in the ledger as it happens rather than as a year-end surprise.