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January 12, 2009

What is depletion?

Depletion is the movement of the cost of natural resources from a company’s balance sheet to its income statements. The objective is to match on the income statement the cost of the natural resources that were sold with the revenues of the natural resources that were sold. The cost of the natural resources sold is referred to as depletion expense.

Conceptually, depletion is similar to the depreciation of property, plant and equipment.

Learn about Depreciation.




Comments

2 Responses to “What is depletion?”

  1. Kathryn on January 12th, 2009 12:26 pm

    Dear Accounting Coach,

    I am currently a bookkeeper for a engineering firm here in Southern California. We use QKBKS for our bookkeeping and track some of our expenses as reimbursable to our customers. We have a non-cash expense, its printing & reproduction. I have gone on line to try and learn how to track these expenses and charge them back to our customers. But I am not happy with the results. One way was to create a fake non-cash bank account and enter these expenses directly into the register using the our in house printing & reproduction expense account and then entering in the customer to be charged for each transaction. After invoicing the customer (the in house printing & reproduction expense) account is zeroed out, leaving a A/R Balance. At the end of each month make a journal entry, debiting the non-cash bank account for the negative balance and crediting a new non-cash income (other income) account for non cash reimbursable expenses. But what if you haven’t invoiced all of your customers for these expenses yet, won’t this journal entry reflect the wrong amount of non-cash other income? Do you know of a better way?

  2. kwebe on February 9th, 2009 10:22 am

    pls I am currently a holder of the BACCALUAREATE technique in accounting working with an NGO ( non governmental organisation) in country ,I aces alots of difficulties in keeping it daily records and most particurlarly adjusting it past transactions since these transactions were done when Iwas not yet there and the had neverbeen an accountant in this NGO.pls I will be very grateful for any helpful information from you.

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