A book schedule exported from your depreciation software usually prints each asset's life in years — 39 for a building, 15 for land improvements, 5 for a vehicle. DepreciationPro stores book life in months. This article covers telling us the file is a book schedule and getting that column converted.
Tell us what kind of schedule it is
On the upload step, above the file drop zone, four cards ask What kind of schedule is this?
Tax depreciation
Book / GAAP depreciation
Both tax and book, for a file that carries a tax column set and a separate book column set
Detect it, if you are not sure. We read the columns and work it out.
The card you chose last time is already selected (Tax, the first time). Pick Book / GAAP depreciation and drop the file.
Your choice follows you through the import: a Book file pill next to the Import Assets heading stays on every step. Click it to change your mind and a dialog opens where you pick a different type; confirming reads the same file again under the new type, so you do not pick it a second time. Column choices you had made are reset. For a PDF, confirming starts the import over from the upload step.
We use your answer instead of our own read. You exported the file, so you know what is in it. The notice at the top of the Review step says the file is being imported as a book schedule, and its Details line notes when our read of the columns disagreed with your answer.
What choosing "Book / GAAP depreciation" does
Every asset imports carrying its book figures and no federal tax class. You assign a MACRS class to each one in the guided step after import, and tax depreciation stays uncomputed until you do.
After import, DepreciationPro opens the Book depr. tab with the import receipt. When assets still need a federal class, What's Next? includes Assign MACRS classes.
That is deliberate. A book schedule doesn't state a federal tax life, so rather than guess one, we bring the book numbers in as authoritative and leave the tax side for you to set.
If that isn't what you want, choose Continue mapping for tax on that Review-step notice. The tax fields come back on their own, and any column you mapped by hand stays where you put it.
Your columns land on the book fields
Once you declare a book schedule, the columns a tax file and a book file share the same name for are mapped to the book side, not the tax side:
Column in your file | Maps to |
Method | Book Method |
Convention | Book Convention |
Life | Book Useful Life (Months), with the years-to-months conversion offered beside it |
In Service, Date In Service | Book In-Service Date |
Acquired | Book Acquired Date |
Beginning accumulated depreciation | Book Accumulated Depreciation |
A note on Map Columns lists what moved, so nothing changes silently: Mapped … to the book fields because you declared a book file. Each column's dropdown lists the book fields first, and Book In-Service Date is the date the step asks for.
Ending accumulated depreciation, current-year depreciation, and net book value are labeled as reconciliation figures. They stay mappable, but nothing is mapped to them for you; DepreciationPro computes those from the book setup.
Changing the declaration reads the file again and resets your column choices, including columns you mapped by hand.
Convert a years column to book months
On a file you declared as Book / GAAP depreciation, the conversion is offered for you. Your life column stays in the table and an AI-derived Book Useful Life (Months) column appears beside it, already selected, showing the converted values — 5 becomes 60, 39 becomes 468. Remove it from the source column if you would rather map the life yourself.
On a file left on Let us detect it, map your life column to GAAP Book Useful Life (Months) on Map Columns.
If the values read as years rather than months, we say so under that field:
"Life" reads as years (39), and this field is in months.
and offer to do the conversion:
Map "Life" to Recovery Period and derive months from it (39 → 468)
One click does both halves: your life column feeds Recovery Period as the tax life in years, and a converted Book Useful Life (Months) column is derived from it — 39 years becomes 468 months. The original column in your file is left untouched.
Nothing converts unless you click. If you'd rather map the column yourself, ignore the offer.
Why the offer mentions Recovery Period
One column feeds one field. When you map your life column into Book Useful Life (Months), it stops feeding whatever field it fed before — usually Recovery Period, which leaves you without a tax life. Accepting the offer puts that back in the same click.
On a file you've told us is book only, there is no tax life to restore, so the offer converts the column to months and leaves Recovery Period alone.
Lives we read as years
A value under 12, or one of the standard recovery periods: 15, 20, 27.5, 30, 31.5, 39, 40.
Common genuine month values — 12, 24, 36, 60, 84, 120 — are left alone, so a file that already uses months is never interrupted.
Book life is stored in whole months. If a value has to be rounded to get there, the message tells you what was stored: a life of 31.5 years is 378 months, and a book life entered as 31.5 stores as 32 months with a note saying so.
What you'll see on the review screen
Assets that came in without a federal tax class are counted separately from rows with a problem. The confirmation before you import says how many will import and how many are waiting on a class — those two numbers never contradict each other.