Volume IV in the QuickBooks Cookbook? series shows a simpler way to account for fixed assets in farm and ranch businesses that use cash accounting. Setting up Inventory Part Items in a special way allows keeping detailed fixed asset records entirely within any QuickBooks desktop edition (Pro, Premier, Accountant, Enterprise), without the need for additional software or Web-based services, and without ever needing to use Journal Entries or debits and credits. This unique approach lets you quickly see the entire transaction history for any asset at any time, makes it easy to update asset values for preparing market value balance sheets, and produces the fixed asset reports you need for income tax preparation--lists of purchases, sales, trade-ins, and disposals for the year, all keyed to your tax preparer's asset list. Because it is based on Inventory Part Items, you can use one Item to manage a group of like assets acquired in a single purchase--breeding livestock, several machines of the same type, a fleet of vehicles, etc. Simply using the Item to record things like livestock deaths or selling part of the group--a few cull cows, or one machines from a group of three, for instance--causes QuickBooks to automatically maintain a count of the number of animals or machines remaining in the group.The book provides a broad discussion of depreciation, exploring whether cash based recordkeepers should enter depreciation expense at all, and showing how to calculate depreciation with a free spreadsheet template downloadable from the publisher's Web site.Like all books in the QuickBooks Cookbook(tm) series, this one is loaded with screenshots and step-by-step agricultural examples readers can directly apply to their own fixed asset record keeping needs.