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Tools and equipment

A melter, a bench scale, a label printer: things the workshop owns and keeps, as opposed to materials it consumes. They are not stock — pouring a candle does not use up a jug — so they live under Assets, with their own cost, their own wear and their own end.

The assets list: what each kind cost, what it has depreciated, what it is worth now

Kinds and items​

The list works like materials do: one row per kind of thing ("Pouring jug 2 L"), expanded into the individual items you own of it. Each item is tracked separately, because each has its own purchase, its own age and its own fate.

An item carries:

  • An inventory number and, if you like, a serial number
  • Acquisition date and cost, and the supplier it came from
  • The location it lives in
  • Useful life in months and an optional salvage value
  • Whether it depreciates at all

Tools bought on a supplier receipt can be added straight from that receipt — see Purchases and receipts. The item then carries its share of the delivery charge, exactly as a material lot would.

Depreciation​

Depreciation is straight-line and monthly: cost minus salvage value, divided by the useful life, charged once for each finished month the item has been in service.

  • Post depreciation for all catches every item up to the end of last month in one click. It is safe to press whenever you like — a month that already has an entry is never charged twice.
  • Each item keeps a history: the month, the amount, what the accumulated total became and what the item was worth after it.
  • The current month is never charged early. Depreciation belongs to a month that has finished.

Depreciation history for one item, month by month

The monthly figures reach the Profit report as their own line — see Reports. They deliberately do not touch product unit cost: a candle's cost is what went into that candle.

Writing an item off​

When a tool is worn out, lost, sold or simply gone, write it off with a reason and a date. A written-off item stops depreciating, leaves the active count, and stays in the register with its reason — so the question "where did the second jug go?" has an answer a year later.

Stocktake​

Assets have their own stocktake, in the same shape as the material one: walk the workshop, mark what you actually found, and record what is missing. The result is a dated record rather than a silent correction.