Depreciation and finance

A CMMS with fixed-asset depreciation built in

In short

Most maintenance systems stop at the work order and export asset data for finance to depreciate elsewhere. Cohiva Control is a CMMS that carries each asset from its maintenance register into a native depreciation ledger, supporting six methods including AASB 16 leases, and posting monthly journals to Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite or Crunch from one system.

A CMMS with fixed-asset depreciation built in

A maintenance system and an asset-depreciation system are usually two different products. The maintenance team runs work orders in a CMMS; the finance team depreciates the same assets in a separate register. The two are reconciled every period, and the same pump or chiller is recorded twice. Cohiva Control is built on the opposite premise: maintenance and depreciation belong on one asset record, in one system. This is the wedge that sets it apart from a maintenance-only CMMS.

What most CMMS tools do

Most maintenance tools are very good at the maintenance half. They track assets, raise work orders, schedule preventive maintenance and capture inspections. For the books, though, they stop at the work order and hand off: you export an asset list, and finance depreciates it in a fixed-asset register or an ERP module. That hand-off is where data drifts apart and where reconciliation work appears. It is not a flaw in those tools; it is simply the boundary they were built to stop at.

What Cohiva Control does instead

Cohiva Control keeps going past the work order. The asset your team maintains is the asset the depreciation engine works on. That engine supports six methods:

  • Straight-line, for assets that lose value steadily over time.
  • Diminishing value, for assets that lose value faster early.
  • Double declining balance, an accelerated method with a straight-line finish.
  • Units of production, tied to the asset’s meter.
  • Sum of years digits, an accelerated method with a smooth taper.
  • AASB 16 leases, for right-of-use assets on the balance sheet.

Each monthly run writes to an append-only depreciation ledger and can post a journal to Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite or Cohiva Crunch. Money is a fixed-precision decimal rounded half up, never a floating point number, and depreciation never reduces book value below the residual value. The run is idempotent, so re-running a month does not double-post, and posting state is tracked separately from the immutable ledger row so a failed post can be retried without corrupting it.

What you keep on the maintenance side

Joining depreciation in does not thin out the CMMS. You still have an asset register with stable QR-codeable IDs, work orders on a server-enforced state machine, preventive maintenance on time or meter intervals, inspections that can raise a work order on a failed item, parts with reorder points, and a contractor-compliance gate that hard-blocks an uninsured or unlicensed contractor. Cohiva Control is database per tenant, so each operator’s data sits in its own isolated database.

Why it matters

The payoff is a single source of truth for each asset. A disposal in maintenance is the same event the depreciation ledger sees, the journal that hits your accounting system comes from the same record your technicians worked on, and there is no second register to keep in step. For operators who genuinely do both jobs, maintaining assets and depreciating them, that integration removes recurring, error-prone reconciliation work.

Part of the Cohiva platform

Cohiva Control is part of the Cohiva platform. Leisure operators often run it with Cohiva Complex, and finance teams connect it to Cohiva Crunch for the general ledger and consolidation. Explore the platform at www.cohiva.app.

This page provides general information about how Cohiva Control calculates depreciation. It is not accounting, tax or financial advice. Confirm treatment with your accountant or adviser.

Frequently asked questions

Why combine a CMMS with depreciation?
Because the asset you maintain and the asset you depreciate are the same asset. Keeping both on one record removes the export-and-reconcile step between a maintenance system and a separate fixed-asset register.
Which depreciation methods are supported?
Six: straight-line, diminishing value, double declining balance, units of production, sum of years digits and AASB 16 leases. Each is computed by the product's depreciation engine.
Is the depreciation data trustworthy?
Money is held as a fixed-precision decimal rounded half up, never as a floating point number, the ledger is append-only, and depreciation never reduces book value below the residual value.
Does it post to my accounting system?
Yes. Each monthly run can post journals to Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite or Cohiva Crunch, and the run is idempotent so re-running it does not double-post.
Do I lose any maintenance features by getting depreciation too?
No. The full CMMS is there: an asset register, work orders, preventive maintenance, inspections, parts and a contractor-compliance gate. The depreciation ledger sits alongside them on the same asset record.