Bring a register's book side across with its tax side, and set up every book in one pass.
A vendor asset schedule often carries both. Importing one creates the GAAP books for you, which is the only way to set up books in bulk.
When the app sees both sides in one file it says so at the top of the mapping step, naming the tax fields and the book fields it found and telling you it will import and calculate both side by side.
Where this is in the app
Dashboard → Import assets — or, from a return, Assets tab → Add assets → Bulk import — then the Map Columns step.
Everything here happens on that step. See Mapping columns, and what the step does for the step itself.
Column headings the import recognizes on its own
Book field | Headings it matches |
Useful life | Book Useful Life · Book Life · Book Life (Months) · Book Useful Life Months · GAAP Useful Life · GAAP Life · Useful Life (Months) · Life (Months) |
Salvage | Book Salvage · Book Salvage Value · GAAP Salvage · Book Residual · Residual Value |
Accumulated | Book Accum Dep · Book Accumulated Depreciation · GAAP Accum Dep · GAAP Accumulated Depreciation · Book Prior Dep |
Method | Book Method · Book Depr Method · Book Depreciation Method · GAAP Method · Book Dep Method |
Convention | Book Convention · Book Conv · GAAP Convention |
Heading matching ignores spacing and punctuation, so Book Life, BookLife, and book_life all match.
A matched book column arrives carrying a Suggested badge rather than a confirmed one, so it is on the mapping step for you to confirm, not already settled.
Anything the import does not recognize you map by hand there. The book fields are listed as GAAP book useful life in months, GAAP book salvage/residual value, GAAP accumulated book depreciation at start of year, Book depreciation method, and Book convention.
On a file the app reads as a book file, or one you declare as Book / GAAP depreciation on the upload step, a combined column like Method / Conv. with cells like MT /HY is offered as a split, routing the method half and the convention half to the two book fields.
Declaring the file also sends the bare Method, Convention, Life, In Service, Acquired, and beginning accumulated columns to the book fields instead of the tax fields. See Import a book depreciation schedule for what moves and how to undo it.
What an imported book arrives with
The file's method, when it names one the app can represent. DDB, 150DB, and SYD spellings land as the declining-balance and sum-of-years-digits methods. A MACRS code like
MTorMlands as the MACRS method its book life implies: 60 months arrives as MACRS 200% DB, 240 as MACRS 150% DB, 330 or 468 as MACRS Straight-Line. Straight-line remains the fallback for a file with no method column.A convention to match. The file's convention is honored on MACRS methods. When the file names none, a MACRS method defaults to Mid-Month on real-property lives and Half-Year otherwise; the non-MACRS methods always arrive Full-Month.
Salvage from the file, or 0 when the file has none.
Accumulated depreciation from the file, ticked as prior depreciation imported, with an as-of date of December 31 of the year before the return's tax year.
A method code the app genuinely cannot represent still imports as straight-line, and the mapping step says so, naming the code and how many rows carry it. A MACRS code whose book life matches no MACRS recovery period gets a per-row warning and the same straight-line fallback.
Book life is expected in months
The book useful life column is read as a number of months. The import strips a trailing "months" or "mo" and reads what is left, so 60, 60 mo, and 60 months all land as 60.
A column stated in years is not converted just because it is a life column. A "Book Period" of 5 lands as 5 months, not 60. Two things can rescue it:
Recognized vendor formats convert on the way in. Bloomberg Tax's "Book Asset Detail" report and Asset Keeper Pro both state book life in years, and their mappers multiply by twelve. On the Bloomberg Tax route the mapping step also shows a read-only note recording the conversion. The Asset Keeper Pro route performs the same conversion without showing that note.
The mapping step may offer a derived column. On a file it reads as a book file, it can add a column headed Book Useful Life (Months), marked AI-derived, built from the file's life column multiplied by twelve. On a file you declared as a book schedule the derived column is already selected; otherwise accept it with its button. Accepting it replaces the book life on every row, so it fixes a whole column at once and is not a per-row correction.
Filtering the Book depr. tab by useful life after an import is the quickest way to see whether lives arrived on the scale you expected. A five-year life that came in as five months reads "5 mo" there instead of "5 yr".
No book life means no book
The useful life is what a book record is built around, so a row that yields salvage or accumulated depreciation but no life gets no book. The preview shows the life as (missing) and warns "Book useful life is required when book salvage or accumulated depreciation is specified".
That is an advisory, not a blocker. The row still imports with its tax side intact, it just arrives without a book.
If a register comes through with fewer books than you expected, an unmapped or absent life column is the first thing to check.
Checking what landed
The Book depr. tab is the fastest check after an import. Its count against the Assets tab's count tells you how many assets came through with books.