Another great support question recently came in, this time from Alexia at ARRRT!
From Alexia:
"How do I deal with equipment and depreciation on [Outright]? I bought a new computer at the beginning of the year."
Our response:
You have a two ways you can deal with equipment and depreciation:
1. Unless you plan to spend more than $250,000 on equipment this year (if you do, then you are our hero), you can just expense the entire computer purchase rather than depreciating it. This is called the Section 179 deduction, named because it's from section 179 of the US tax code. Note, you can only do this if you have at least as much income (e.g. you can't use the entire purchase price to create a loss.)
2. You can still choose to depreciate the cost of the computer, which means you deduct the value over multiple years. Computers and other office equipment are depreciated over 5 years. You can get more details on exactly how to handle it at http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p946.pdf
Now, in terms of tracking depreciation in Outright, simply choose the "Depreciation" category in the drop down list under expenses and enter either the full purchase price if you're going to write off the entire amount, or enter the amount you will depreciate for this year. We don't at this time support the actual depreciation calculations, so you will need to do that in a spreadsheet, or get an accountant's help.
