I made a purchase of a laptop for business use, which I believe should be treated as a purchase of an asset (rather than an expense) and depreciated over time.
This is for a (small) Ltd Co.
I made this purchase using a personal debit card, because that is all that was available at the time, so effectively I would be claiming this cost back from the Ltd Co. at some time in future.
What is the best way of entering this into QuickFile? Enter the value as a Money Out transaction directly in the Director’s Loan account, and tag it as Payment to Supplier > Create new invoice > select supplier name > category: Office Equipment (0030) ?
What if there is a single receipt from the supplier covering two items (e.g. laptop & phone)… two separate entries in Director’s Loan account, or a single entry (for the total amount) to a nominal “splits” account and then two separate entries in there?
If so, where would this nominal splits accounts go… it doesn’t seem to fit naturally in any of the categories (it’s a debit card not credit card):
I know ultimately it wouldn’t matter where it sat, but would be nice to find the most appropriate setup.
If you have one receipt with two different items on it that need to be in different nominal categories then you’d create a single purchase with two lines, one for each item, and each line assigned to the relevant nominal. Then attach the original receipt (or a scan of it, if the original is on paper) to the purchase using the Receipt Hub, and mark the purchase as paid from the Director’s Loan account.
If the two different items belong in the same nominal category (e.g. they’re both “office equipment”) then you don’t need to split them into separate lines at all, just create one purchase line for the total amount.
Thanks so much for your helpful reply. I’d forgotten about the possibility of adding multiple lines on a single Purchase… perhaps because I enter most of my purchases not by creating a new purchase and tagging the transaction to match the purchase, but by directly tagging a transaction and then choosing Payment to “Supplier > Create new invoice”… it doesn’t seem possible to do multiple lines with that tagging approach?
Correct - the routes to create purchases via bank tagging and the receipt hub are deliberately simplified to avoid overloading what is supposed to be a streamlined interface. If you need the full suite of options you have to create the purchase directly and then link the bank tag or receipt to the pre-existing purchase rather than creating a new one.
I originally used to create purchases through tagging but the trouble with that is it sets the purchase date to the same as the payment date and, for me at least, the two dates were almost always different and I found myself having to post edit the purchases to change the date to match the supplier’s invoice date. It was actually quicker for me to create the purchases by hand as I processed my invoices, and then separately link the payments when I processed my bank statement (I don’t use auto feeds).
You would be able to claim it as AIA on your tax return, yes, but that doesn’t change the way you enter assets and depreciation in your accounts. You still depreciate assets over their useful lifetime in your accounts even if you claimed the whole lump in one year for tax purposes (depreciation is added back when calculating your taxable profit from your book profit, before capital allowances are figured separately).
