Depreciation Schedule Template for Straight-Line and Declining Balance

If you don’t have good detail on what these line items are, straight-line them as opposed to growing with revenue. That’s because unlike current assets and liabilities, there’s a likelihood these items could be unrelated to operations such as investment assets, pension assets and liabilities, etc. The largest component of most company’s long term assets are fixed assets (property plant and equipment), intangible assets, and increasingly, capitalized software development costs.

How to Build Balance Sheet Projection in Excel

1. In effect, this accounting treatment “smooths out” the company’s income statement so that rather than showing the $100k expense entirely this year, that outflow is effectively being spread out over 5 years as depreciation.
2. Real estate is a specific industry that requires heavy use of the depreciation schedule.
3. The average remaining useful life for existing PP&E and useful life assumptions by management (or a rough approximation) are necessary variables for projecting new Capex.
4. While this can be a time consuming process, the good news is that if you follow the above steps correctly, you will locate the error and your model will balance.
5. For this and other reasons, governments often regulate the different depreciation methods that eligible companies use.

If it seems that the depreciation expense has remained constant, the company may be using a linear depreciation policy, such as the straight-line depreciation method. In such a case, it is handy to use depreciation expense as a percentage of net PP&E, or to simply roll forward the recurring depreciation amount. There are various depreciation methodologies, but the two most common types are straight-line depreciation and accelerated depreciation.

Suppose that the company changes salvage value from $10,000 to $17,000 after three years, but keeps the original 10-year lifetime. With a book value of $73,000, there is now only $56,000 left to depreciate over seven years, or $8,000 per year. That boosts income by $1,000 while making the balance sheet stronger by the same amount each year.

What is a Depreciation Schedule?

But a financial statement model is supposed to represent what we think will actually happen. And what will most likely actually happen is that Apple will continue to borrow and offset future maturities with additional borrowings. Typically, the main balance sheet section of a model will either have its own dedicated worksheet or it will be part of depreciation waterfall a larger worksheet containing other financial statements and schedules. Before we dive into individual line items, here are some balance sheet best practices. Investors and analysts should thoroughly understand how a company approaches depreciation because the assumptions made on expected useful life and salvage value can be a road to the manipulation of financial statements.

How to Balance the 3-Statement Model

The Salvage Value is not included in the Book Value calculation for the declining balance method, so that necessitates the use of the MIN and MAX functions in the above formula. Capex can be forecasted as a percentage of revenue using historical data as a reference point. In addition to following historical trends, management guidance and industry averages should also be referenced as a guide for forecasting Capex. The depreciation expense can be projected by building a PP&E roll-forward schedule based on the company’s existing PP&E and incremental PP&E purchases. But in practice, most companies prefer straight-line depreciation for GAAP reporting purposes because lower depreciation will be recorded in the earlier years of the asset’s useful life than under accelerated depreciation.

Multiply this against projected sales to find a forecast for capital expenditure. For a complete depreciation waterfall schedule to be put together, more data from the company would be required to track the PP&E currently in use and the remaining useful life of each. Additionally, management plans for future capex spending and the approximate useful life assumptions for each new purchase are necessary.

Using this new, longer time frame, depreciation will now be $5,250 per year, instead of the original $9,000. It also keeps the asset portion of the balance sheet from declining as rapidly, because the book value remains higher. Both of these can make the company appear “better” with larger earnings and a stronger balance sheet.