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June 28, 2006

What does Accumulated Depreciation tell us?

Accumulated Depreciation reports the amount of depreciation that has been taken from the time an asset was acquired until the date of the balance sheet. The cost of an asset minus its accumulated depreciation is the asset’s carry value or book value.

Since depreciation is an allocation of an asset’s cost based on the estimated useful life, you should not assume that the depreciation is an indicator of what’s occurring to the asset’s market value. For example, a building in an excellent location may be increasing in value even though depreciation is taken. The present market value might be three times the original cost and yet the accumulated depreciation is now equal to the asset’s cost—meaning its book value is $0.

The amount reported in Accumulated Depreciation merely reports the total amount of an asset’s cost that has been sent over to the income statement as Depreciation Expense since the asset was acquired.

Learn more about Depreciation.




Comments

8 Responses to “What does Accumulated Depreciation tell us?”

  1. mohamed on February 29th, 2008 2:14 pm

    wonderful

  2. Vishakha on June 15th, 2008 12:43 am

    Excellent GUIDE for career

  3. reward on July 23rd, 2008 9:11 am

    its just the cost of an asset -acc depreciation

  4. farhan on November 8th, 2008 12:44 pm

    nice method of discribe any topic

  5. shani on January 12th, 2009 2:49 am

    Its Realy Comfortable For me b coz I dont Have Any Accounts Background But now i Handle Seniour Accountant Post With The help Of AccountingCoach.com

  6. Samantha on January 14th, 2009 7:20 pm

    I still dont know, why we have to show this is makes no sense.. Like does it mean that you know broke even with the purchase of your asset???

  7. SHAHID SOHAIL on May 29th, 2009 5:56 am

    very well explained, it has cleared my all concept

  8. joey on November 7th, 2009 12:34 am

    how do i present this in my SOFP?? = balance sheet?? .. Do i need to show workings on how i get the net book value?? or can i just show the net book value?..

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