Companies spend a lot of money on a lot of things, but each expense usually falls into one of two categories: operating expenditures and capital expenditures. The difference boils down to day-to-day expenses vs. long-term investment. Because these expenditures are handled differently in accounting and under the tax code, most companies maintain separate capital budget and operating budgets
Types of Expenditures A capital expenditure is money spent to acquire an asset that adds value to the company. In other words, capital expenses are investments. When a company buys a building, for example, or a piece of equipment, that's a capital expenditure. An operational expenditure, on the other hand, is money spent to run the company day to day. Workers' salaries, for example, are operational expenses. Within the business world, these concepts are often abbreviated as CapEx for capital expenditures and OpEx for operational expenditures.
Example Say a company needs a copy machine. The cost of the machine itself is a capital expense. Once purchased, the copier goes on the company's balance sheet as an asset, meaning that when it comes time to add up the total value of the company, that value increases by whatever the copier is worth. The costs of the electricity to run the copier and of the paper and toner that go into making copies are operating expenses. On the balance sheet, operating expenses are essentially liabilities, as the overall value of the company is reduced by the amount owed for operating expenses.
Accounting for Capital Expenditure
Every purchase a company makes either represents an expense or an asset. Expenses, like supplies, rent and utilities are quickly used up. Assets add value to the business and have an economic life of at least a year. Capital expenditures are assets that a company must depreciate over the economic life of the asset.
Capital Expenditures Capital expenditures are purchases made to acquire or improve a fixed asset. According to generally accepted accounting principles, a fixed asset is a physical asset the company expects to hold for more than a year, like buildings, equipment, software or machinery. A purchase represents a capital expenditure whether the company purchases the item from someone else or constructs the asset itself. Any money spent on the asset going forward is a capital expenditure if it lengthens the economic life of the asset or increases the asset's value. For example, adding solar panels to the building are a capital expenditure but replacing broken windows with windows of the same quality isn't.
Capitalizing Costs Rather than being expensed immediately, capital expenditures are capitalized as an asset and depreciated. For example, say a company spends $50,000 to purchase a building. The accountant would debit a building asset account for $50,000 and credit cash for $50,000. When the company generates the financial statements, the balance sheet will show a $50,000 fixed asset. Since the transaction was classified as an asset purchase rather than an expense, the purchase won't appear on the expense portion of the income statement.
Calculating Depreciation The company records expense for capital expenditures by identifying the life of the asset and the asset salvage value, and assigning depreciation expense each year. One of the most common depreciation methods used in generally accepted accounting principles is the straight line method. Under this method, the company books an equal amount of depreciation expense each year. For example, if the $50,000 building has an economic life of 10 years and no estimated salvage value, the company would record $5,000 of depreciation expense each year.
Recording Depreciation Expense and Adjusting Asset Value The company records depreciation on the capital expenditure by debiting depreciation expense and crediting accumulated depreciation. The accumulated depreciation reduces the value of capital expenditures on the balance sheet. For example, if the asset was purchased at $50,000 and accumulated depreciation is currently $5,000, the value on the balance sheet will be $45,000. If the company makes $6,000 worth of improvements to the building, the net value would be $51,000 ($50,000 original price plus $6,000 in improvements less $5,000 accumulated depreciation).