{"id":4224,"date":"2013-06-26T06:53:42","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T04:53:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/?p=4224"},"modified":"2013-06-23T06:55:52","modified_gmt":"2013-06-23T04:55:52","slug":"deciding-on-a-useful-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/deciding-on-a-useful-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Deciding on a useful life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An asset\u2019s useful life is the period it\u2019s planned to be used \u2013 normally longer than 12 months for it to be part of <i>property, plant and equipment<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>When you purchase an asset and you\u2019ve initially accounted for it (the asset and the respective liability), there are numerous things you ought to determine for the asset to account for it <i>subsequently<\/i>.\u00a0<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>One of the things you must determine is the assets useful life \u2013 the period during which the asset is believed to bring economical benefits to the company (i.e. be part of the business to generate revenue or reduce cost). This is the period the company plans to use the asset until it\u2019s to be <i>utilized<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Determining the asset\u2019s useful life encompasses a few things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Understanding the <i>asset in general<\/i> and it\u2019s commonly known useful life (i.e. you cannot expect to use a computer for 10 years nowadays);<\/li>\n<li>Knowing the <i>needs of your business<\/i>, i.e. when it\u2019s time and need for a reinvestment or renovating your business (and whether this asset will be replaced as a part of it or not);<\/li>\n<li>Knowing your financial possibilities for a new investment to find a replacement for the asset \u2013 as it happens, it\u2019s not always to have the newest equipment just because you want to have it. Sometimes the financial abilities, funds for the investment are limited and as such you may be required to use the asset for a longer period (yet still not exceeding it\u2019s maximum life) than you initially vision.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When determining the asset\u2019s useful life, take into consideration all of those factors and what\u2019s more, in the exact same order. If you don\u2019t know your business\u2019 exact needs for reinvestment, just take into account the first and the last factor and so on. Most important thing is to not exceed the assets maximum usage period (as we made an example above about computers).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An asset\u2019s useful life is the period it\u2019s planned to be used \u2013 normally longer than 12 months for it to be part of property, plant and equipment. When you purchase an asset and you\u2019ve initially accounted for it (the asset and the respective liability), there are numerous things you ought to determine for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,33,55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1-basic-accounting","category-1-5-property-plant-and-equipment","category-1-5-3-subsequent-measurement"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4224"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4228,"href":"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224\/revisions\/4228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.officetodo.com\/public\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}