Depreciation Calculator

Depreciation spreads an asset's cost over its useful life instead of expensing it all at once, and the two textbook methods for doing that produce very different year-by-year pictures even though they can land on the exact same total. This calculator builds the complete schedule for whichever method you pick — asset cost, salvage value and useful life go in, and a full table of yearly depreciation expense, accumulated depreciation and book value comes out.

Straight-line depreciation is the simpler of the two: annualDepreciation = (cost − salvage) ÷ usefulLife, the same figure every single year, so book value walks down a straight line from cost to salvage. It's the default assumption in most introductory accounting courses and the easiest schedule to explain to a stakeholder who just wants one predictable number per year.

Declining-balance depreciation front-loads the expense instead: each year's depreciation is the current book value multiplied by a rate, where rate = multiplier ÷ usefulLife. A multiplier of 2 is the classic double-declining-balance (DDB) method; 1.5 gives 150%-declining balance. Because the rate applies to a shrinking book value, expense is largest in year one and tapers every year after — useful for assets (vehicles, computers, machinery) that genuinely lose most of their value early. This calculator floors declining-balance depreciation at the salvage value directly: once a year's rate-based expense would take book value below salvage, that year's expense is capped to land exactly on salvage, and depreciation stops for every remaining year. Note this is a simplified, transparent choice — some real-world DDB schedules instead switch over to straight-line partway through the asset's life to fully deplete to salvage by the final year; this tool's floor-at-salvage approach is simpler to audit and is disclosed here rather than hidden.

Because both methods start at the same cost and end at the same salvage value, they always depreciate the identical total amount over the asset's life — the chart on this page exists specifically to show that it's the pace, not the total, that differs. Switch the primary method to see either schedule in full, and use the dual-curve chart to compare how aggressively each one front-loads the expense.