Free ACCA & CIMA online courses from OpenTuition

Free Notes, Lectures, Tests and Forums for ACCA and CIMA exams

20% off ACCA & CIMA Books

OpenTuition recommends the new interactive BPP books for September 2025 exams.
Get your discount code >>

Depreciation Introduction – ACCA Financial Accounting (FA) lectures

VIVA

Reader Interactions

Comments

  2. First for thanks for the quality education
    ?My question is that what is residual value and what is scrap value ? Are both the same thing ?
    ?After 5 years its NBV = 0 OR 1 Then if it’s still sold for 500 then it’s the profit earned from disposal ?

  4. Hello sir,

    Do all non current assets depreciate ?
    If not, which ones do ?

    Also, depreciation not being a true value – its decided by us correct ? – the year of its lifespan, and therefore the expense per year, as the goal is just to spread and even out the costs over the years of the SOPL.

    • I do say in the lectures that we depreciate all assets that have a limited life and that the only asset you will come across in the exam that we do not depreciate is land.

      The aim is to spread the cost as the asset earns us income. How we do it (and which method we use) is up to the company.

  5. Hi John,
    Thank you for your continued effort. I have following two queries:

    1) If we are sure that the car we bought for $20,000 will be fully depreciated by the end of fifth year. Its value become zero (or 1) in our books. But in market it will still be sold of the half of its original price i.e. on $10,000. Then why do we generally keep 5 years depreciation in case of car. Why can’t we take more years.

    2) Why we are required to fully depreciate anything? Like in case of car where we have its value of $20,000, if we are charging depreciation on 5 years to make it fully depreciate. If we already know that after 5 years its market price will be $10,000 then why we can’t charge depreciation only keeping $10,000 in depreciation account. e.g. $2,000 depreciation per year for 5 years.

    • 1. There is no rule that depreciation should be over 5 years. It is up to the company to decide on their depreciation policy.

      2. There is no requirement to fully depreciate. As I explain in the following lectures, when using straight line depreciation we take into account any expected sale value (and it is only going to be an estimate – we cannot possibly already know what the market price will be in 5 years time), and when using reducing balance depreciation it is irrelevant anyway.

  8. Hello sir,
    Hope u doing well. Sir i wanted to ask the journal entry for assets purchased by utilising Reserve maintained for its purchase

    First entry would be

    Fixed Assets A/c Dr
    To Vendor A/c or To Bank A/c

    Please explain how to give entries for reserve utilisation

    • The second entry would be to transfer the same amount from the replacement reserve to retained earnings.

      This is only relevant for limited companies, which are dealt with in a later chapter. The replacement reserve is not required by law but is kept separate by some companies just to make it clear why they are not paying out all the profits as dividend – however, again, this is explained in the chapter on limited companies.

  9. I understand it鈥檚 better to spread the cost of the life of the asset. But wouldn鈥檛 there be a big discrepancy in the money we have and what our financial statements says.

    Imagine we bought 10 cars for 拢20,000. For 5 year duration.

    That鈥檚 拢200,000 cash gone from our business account. But on SOPL we鈥檒l only show 拢160,000 as our non current assets.

    And 拢40,000 as our depreciation expense.

    Where would we write that 拢200,000 has left the business in the first instance ?

    • There will be no discrepancy.

      On the SOFP (not the SOPL!) we show the breakdown of the original cost and the accumulated depreciation subtracted.

      When we buy the assets, non-current assets increase by 200,000 and cash falls by 200,000. When we depreciate, the non-current assets fall by 40,000 and the profit falls by 40,000.

      It will maybe be more clear when you have watched the following lectures where I show the double-entries.

  10. After 5 years; referring to the example you gave us, how will l record the non-current asset in the statement of financial position?
    As in what amount will l record in case it has not yet been disposed of?

  12. kingkonsajang:

    Repairs to an existing machine are always revenue expenditure.

    (If there is the unusual situation where you buy machinery second-hand and it is not working when you buy it, then and only then would repairs to make it working initially be treated as capital expenditure. However I cannot imagine this ever being relevant for the exam).

  13. if the machine breaks down and it is only possible for it to WORK if you fix it, does the repair cost in that instance become a capital expenditure?

    or lets say you acquired a non-current good such as machinery, second-hand, and it requires that it be fixed in order to work. In such a circumstance like the example above, does the repair cost become a capital expenditure?

    are repairs always a capital expenditure?

    thank you

Leave a Reply