Straight-line and declining balance depreciation with a year-by-year schedule of expense and book value. Free.
Enter the cost, a salvage value below it, and a whole number of years.
NinjaFunction's Depreciation Calculator spreads the cost of an asset over its useful life. Choose straight-line or declining balance (including double-declining), enter the cost, the salvage value and the life in years, and read a full schedule showing each year's expense, the accumulated depreciation and the book value. It runs in your browser.
| Year | Straight-line | Double-declining (40%) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,800 | 4,000 |
| 2 | 1,800 | 2,400 |
| 3 | 1,800 | 1,440 |
| 4 | 1,800 | 864 |
| 5 | 1,800 | 296 |
| Total | 9,000 | 9,000 |
Book value is what the asset is carried at in the accounts: cost minus the depreciation so far. It is a bookkeeping figure and often differs from what you could actually sell it for. A truck might be down to a book value of 2,000 and still sell for 6,000, or the reverse if it was damaged. The difference between sale price and book value is recorded as a gain or loss on sale.
| Asset | Common range (rule of thumb) |
|---|---|
| Computers and phones | 3 to 5 years |
| Vehicles | 4 to 8 years |
| Office furniture | 7 to 10 years |
| Machinery | 5 to 15 years |
| Buildings | 20 to 40 years |
These are rough guides, not rules. The right useful life depends on how hard you use the asset, how fast technology changes and what your accountant or local rules require. If a company replaces its laptops every three years, three years is the sensible life for them, whatever a table says.
It is the way a business spreads the cost of an asset, such as a machine, vehicle or computer, over the years it is expected to be useful, rather than counting the whole cost in the year it was bought.
Yearly depreciation = (Cost − Salvage value) ÷ Useful life. An asset costing 10,000 with a salvage value of 1,000 over 5 years loses 1,800 a year.
Each year you take a fixed percentage of the asset's current book value, so the expense is largest at first and falls over time. Double-declining uses twice the straight-line rate, which is 200 ÷ life as a percentage.
What you expect the asset to be worth at the end of its useful life, from selling it or scrapping it. It can be zero. Depreciation never takes the book value below it.
Not necessarily. Tax law usually sets its own rates and rules, for example the MACRS tables in the United States or the block-of-assets system in India. This tool shows the accounting methods. Check your local tax rules for claims.
The tool finishes in the final year by taking whatever is left above the salvage value, so the book value ends exactly on salvage.