Fixed assets

Some things you buy are used up: petrol, stationery, this month's rent. Those are expenses — they hit your Profit & Loss straight away. Other things you keep and use for years: a van, a laptop, office furniture. Those are fixed assets, and they sit on your Balance Sheet as something you own.

How Fortura knows which is which

By the account you choose. Approve an invoice against a fixed-asset account — Property, Plant & Equipment rather than an expense account — and Fortura creates the asset from that invoice and asks you to set it up.

Where they live

Accounting → Fixed Assets. A new one arrives marked Needs Setup, and Set up depreciation fills in the rest. The invoice it came from, the supplier and the invoice number come across with it, so you can always trace it back.

Depreciation

Depreciation spreads the cost over the years you use the asset. Once it is set up, press Run Depreciation on the Fixed Assets page to post a month — it catches up any months you still owe. Each month posted turns a slice of the cost into an expense and drops the asset's value on your Balance Sheet by the same amount.