Most long-term assets depreciate over time. Depreciation can be a burden to businesses wishing to sell their assets. However, understanding how an asset has depreciated can be very beneficial during tax season. Managers can write depreciation off as a business expense, thereby reducing their taxes.
Tracking the depreciation of fixed assets can be tedious and time-consuming. Intuit has developed a solution for busy managers. The Quickbooks Fixed Asset Manager helps small business bookkeepers and owners track the book value of an asset over time.
The Fixed Asset Manager can be used either as an extension of Quickbooks or used as a separate product. Using the tool independently from Quickbooks can be more efficient, because it doesn't require you spend an hour integrating the two products. However, you may find it more worthwhile to integrate the two programs if you have already listed your assets in Quickbooks.
Intuit has provided a number of options to import data as conveniently as possible. You can enter data manually or import it directly into Quickbooks.
The tool uses a number of depreciation methods. These algorithms will allow you to calculate depreciation for the book value of your asset, your Alternative Minimum tax or federal or state taxes for your business. Managers can also utilize the asset manager to determine the expected gain on a sale. The asset manager will automatically update your ledgers with any dispositions after a sale has been made.
Data can be exported to an Excel document, .CSV file or a Quickbooks document. You can also use the tool to produce a number of reports or forms to forecast the future book value of your assets and tax write-offs for upcoming years. The tool also has a feature that allows managers to manually override any calculations.
The Quickbooks fixed asset manager is an efficient and reliable tool for predicting the future value of assets. Have any of you tried using this tool? We would like to hear your experiences.