SAP B1 blog

A special depreciation is a manual form of depreciation in SAP Business One Depreciation, which deviates from the normal depreciation plan of an asset. It is used when tax or business regulations permit additional or different depreciation – for example, for investment grants, extraordinary impairments, or parallel accounting standards.

The special depreciation is configured within the depreciation areas. SAP Business One allows several depreciation areas to be maintained in parallel for each asset – for example, for local commercial law, tax law, IFRS or US GAAP. The principle of special depreciation specifically exploits this structure:

Main depreciation area: Carries out both normal depreciation and special depreciation and posts both variants to the general ledger.

- Derived area: Is assigned to the main area and only carries out normal depreciation — without special depreciation and without posting to ledger. It serves as a basis for comparison and makes the impact of the special depreciation transparent.

Important restriction: Only one valuation area of the type „Derived area" can be created. This must be taken into account when planning multiple parallel depreciation scenarios.

When setting up, the same depreciation method can be used for normal and alternative (special) depreciation. The system calculates both variants in parallel and shows the difference. The monthly instalment follows straight-line depreciation: With an acquisition cost of €6,000 and a useful life of 36 months, this results in €166.67 per month or €2,000 per year.

A special depreciation is not to be confused with planned depreciation – the latter follows the defined useful life without manual intervention. Nor is it pure impairment: special depreciation usually follows tax or legal rules, whereas impairment reflects the actual value of an asset. It must also be distinguished from the immediate depreciation of low-value assets (GWG), which is based on acquisition cost limits. Special depreciation is a control instrument for targeted deviations from the normal plan – always documented, traceable, and comparable across the derived area.