Help & Documentation

Offline-first guidance for safe gear lists.

Depreciation (AfA)

Write equipment off over its useful life — GWG instant write-off, linear AfA, and the Anlageverzeichnis

AfA (Absetzung für Abnutzung) is the German tax write-off for equipment that lasts more than a year: instead of deducting the full price at once, you spread it across the asset's useful life. It lives in the Fixed-Asset Register (Accounting → Fixed assets), where you pick a tax year and post the year's depreciation into your books — those entries then feed your Anlage EÜR. This is the tax figure, separate from the display-only depreciation estimate shown on an owned-gear item.

What AfA is

Depreciation spreads the cost of a long-lived asset across the years you use it, instead of deducting it all in the year of purchase.

  • AfA (Absetzung für Abnutzung) is the deduction the Finanzamt expects for equipment that stays useful beyond the year you buy it — cameras, lenses, computers, and the like.
  • Cheap items are written off in one go; pricier ones are written down a slice at a time over their useful life (Nutzungsdauer).
  • Each year's AfA is a business expense, so it lowers your taxable profit and flows into your EÜR automatically once posted.
  • This is the tax AfA. It's separate from the 'Depreciation' estimate on an owned-gear item, which is a display-only resale-value guide (it assumes a 10% residual) and never touches your books or taxes.

Where AfA lives now

Depreciation moved out of the Reports page into a dedicated Fixed-Asset Register — the Anlageverzeichnis.

  • Open it from Accounting → Fixed assets. A tax-year selector sits at the top; everything below reflects the year you pick.
  • The register lists every depreciable asset with its acquisition cost, this year's AfA, the accumulated AfA so far, and the remaining book value (Restbuchwert).
  • Totals at the bottom sum the register and break it down by asset class.
  • Disposals (selling or scrapping an asset) are tracked here too, and the register is also where you export the formal Anlageverzeichnis as PDF or CSV.
Tips
  • If you used the older standalone AfA panel in Reports, it's gone — the same posting now lives in Fixed assets, and Reports keeps only the Anlageverzeichnis export.

Post depreciation for a tax year

Posting turns the year's calculated AfA into expense entries in your books.

  1. Open Accounting → Fixed assets and choose the tax year.
  2. Review the register — each row shows the AfA that will be booked for that asset this year.
  3. Click 'Post AfA <year>' and confirm.
  4. The depreciation lands as expense entries (booked as AfA, or as a GWG write-off for low-value items) and immediately feeds your Anlage EÜR for that year.
Tips
  • Posting is idempotent: once a year is posted the button becomes 'Regenerate', which replaces the whole set with a fresh calculation — handy after you've added or edited an asset.
  • A 'Remove' (trash) button next to it deletes that year's auto-generated AfA again, leaving the rest of your expenses untouched.
Common Pitfalls
  • Posting the wrong year — the entries are stamped with the selected tax year, so check the selector before you confirm.
  • Deleting an asset from the register removes its depreciation schedule, but AfA you've already posted to your books for past years stays put. Use 'Remove' on a year if you want those entries gone.

How the amount is calculated

The method is chosen automatically from the price, following the standard German rules.

  • Low-value assets (GWG) — a purchase of €800 or less (net) is written off in full in the year you acquire it (Anlage EÜR line 31).
  • Kleinunternehmer: you enter the gross price, and the app takes 19 % VAT out before it compares with €800. So an asset up to €952 gross is a GWG. The amount written off is the gross price you entered.
  • Linear AfA — an asset above €800 is written down in equal straight-line steps over its useful life, all the way to €0 with no residual value (Anlage EÜR line 29). If you also booked the purchase receipt as an expense in category 0440, the EÜR counts only its input VAT from that receipt: the cost is deducted through the AfA, not a second time. For a low-value asset (GWG) it is the other way round: the receipt in 0670 is the deduction, and the write-off row of the same cost is not counted again.
  • First-year pro-rata — in the year of purchase the linear amount is reduced month by month (pro rata temporis), and the month you bought it counts as a full month.
  • If you haven't set a useful life on an item, a default of 7 years is used.
  • The basis is the purchase price exactly as you entered it — there's no automatic net/gross VAT conversion.
Common Pitfalls
  • Degressive (declining-balance) AfA and the Sammelposten pool are not supported — depreciation is always GWG-or-linear, decided purely by price.
  • Setting an item's depreciation method to 'none' takes it out of the AfA run entirely.

Where assets come from

The register pulls from your gear and from any one-off assets you add by hand.

  • Owned gear is included automatically when it has a purchase price, a purchase date, and a depreciation method other than 'none'.
  • Only assets you actually own count — gear marked as a rental or otherwise not yours is left out of depreciation.
  • For assets that aren't gear (a laptop, a desk, a vehicle), use 'Add asset' to enter a manual fixed asset with its own cost, date, and useful life.
  • Set or correct an asset's cost, acquisition date, and useful life on the owned-gear item or in the asset editor — those values drive the whole calculation.

Export the Anlageverzeichnis

The asset register exports as a formal statement for your accountant or the Finanzamt.

  • From Accounting → Fixed assets, use the PDF or CSV buttons to export the register for the selected year.
  • The same export is also available in Accounting → Reports under the 'Anlageverzeichnis' panel, which links straight back to the Fixed assets workspace for managing the assets.
  • The statement lists each asset's acquisition cost, the AfA, the remaining book value (Restbuchwert), and any disposals in the year.
See also

Add your equipment (or let owned gear flow in), pick a tax year, and post the AfA — low-value items write off at once, everything else straight-line over its useful life. The posted expenses feed your EÜR, and the Anlageverzeichnis export gives your accountant the formal record. Re-posting always replaces the year cleanly, so it's safe to regenerate whenever an asset changes.

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