For assets imported into AssetAccountant with an Opening Balance, you may be expecting that AssetAccountant would take the first use date, and timeframe of the Useful Life (also known as Effective Life) of the asset to determine when the depreciation will finish.


Sometimes, AssetAccountant will be "extending" the depreciation calculations past the end date you think they would finish to zero.


If there is any overlapping or conflicting data in your asset imports, AssetAccountant will assume that the depreciation rate is 'king', as it were, and will override Useful Life.


So if you set up an asset as Straight Line (Prime Cost) for 5 years, AssetAccountant will take the 20% rate and apply that against the cost base for the asset.


If you assert a different book value at opening balance, AssetAccountant is still going to apply cost x rate.


As an extreme example at the other end of things, if your opening balance asserted that the book value was $1 and there were 4 years left to run, AssetAccountant would not depreciate at $0.25 per year for the remaining life. The calculation would apply the cost x rate.


If you have affected assets where the depreciation calculations are running past the date you expect because of the above scenarios, you can perform a reassessment and set the Effective Life (or end of life) to what you think is appropriate from the Opening Balance.

This will have the effect of adjusting the rate applied to the cost base of the asset and should get you the outcome that you're looking for.