It's the last week of September and you have just outfitted a one-person studio in ten days. The new laptop is an emailed Best Buy PDF. The battery drill is a phone photo of a Home Depot slip. The Ace Hardware receipt is a curled strip of thermal paper on the dash of the truck. The standing-desk invoice from Staples is a PDF in a Drive folder named Equipment.
That folder feels like a log. It isn't. In March your accountant will ask a plain question: what did you buy, and what did it cost? Nobody wants to answer it by opening forty files.
What is equipment depreciation tracking?
Here, equipment depreciation tracking means logging each equipment purchase as one row, with an asset or category tag, as it happens. It does not mean computing the IRS schedule: Slipsheet doesn't do that math, and your accountant works the schedule out from your rows.
Why isn't an Equipment folder a log?
A folder stores files. It can't tell you the month's total, which purchases were tools and which were furniture, or how much of it was tax. Every question means opening a file.
A log is the same information as columns: date, vendor, total, tax, category, source. You can sort it, filter it, sum it, and hand it over. The files still matter, but they become evidence the rows point to instead of the system itself.
Depreciation elections, useful lives, and anything with MACRS or Section 179 in its name are your accountant's job. This page stops earlier, at the purchase.
What does a gear week look like as rows?
Here is one invented week, with seven purchases and a mix of sources. It is example data, not a case study.
| date | vendor | total | tax | category | source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-04 | Best Buy | $1,299.00 | $107.17 | Equipment / laptop | email PDF |
| 2026-09-05 | Home Depot | $156.88 | $12.91 | Equipment / tools | phone photo |
| 2026-09-08 | Ace Hardware | $89.43 | $7.36 | Equipment / tools | paper slip |
| 2026-09-10 | Staples | $412.60 | $34.04 | Equipment / furniture | email PDF |
| 2026-09-12 | Office Depot | $53.21 | $4.38 | Office / supplies | paper slip |
| 2026-09-18 | B&H Photo | $2,180.00 | $179.85 | Equipment / camera | email PDF |
| 2026-09-22 | Costco Business Center | $329.99 | $27.22 | Equipment / monitor | forwarded email |
| September | 7 purchases | $4,521.11 | $372.93 |
Filter the category column for Equipment and you get 6 rows, $4,467.90 in total, $368.55 of it tax. The Office Depot slip stays out of that view because it is a supply, not gear. The whole week comes to $4,521.11. Filter the source column for paper slip and you see which purchases exist only on paper, the ones to photograph before the ink fades.
The rule is one sentence: one purchase is one row, and "equipment" (or a finer asset tag like laptop or camera) is a category you filter on, not a second file tree and not a depreciation worksheet.
The tag is your call at review time. Whether a desk is furniture, whether a monitor is a monitor or part of a workstation, whether something is gear at all: you decide, and you can change it. Slipsheet doesn't assign asset classes for you.
Keep the tag list short and reuse it: laptop, camera, tools, furniture, monitor. A dozen tags you use every time beat forty you use once. If your accountant wants something the six columns don't hold, like the date a piece of gear went into service, add a column to your own sheet. The six are the floor, not the ceiling.
Why doesn't the card charge count as the record?
A card charge proves money left. It doesn't say what you bought, what tax was on it, or what shipping was folded in, and those details can matter later. Whether they belong in the cost you record for an asset is a question for your accountant. Keep the receipt either way. The longer version is in a card statement is not a receipt.
What can OCR read off a gear receipt?
Digits, mostly. In a Q2 2026 test of 20 receipts with Tesseract OCR, vendor was right 95% of the time, date and total 100%, and tax only 60%, with all four fields correct on 11 of 20 (55%). Among the hardware and office receipts in that test, the OCR missed the Best Buy tax.
That's why the review step exists. You confirm the total and the tax, and you choose the asset tag, before anything is exported.
Slipsheet is built around that step. Photograph the paper slip, upload the PDF, or forward the confirmation to receipts@slipsheet.app. Each one becomes a row you review, with date, vendor, total, tax, and the tag you set. Then export a CSV, or send the rows to Google Sheets or Excel. The file is yours, and so is the schedule your accountant builds from it.
A few straight answers
What belongs on an equipment purchase log?
Gear you bought to use in the business: computers, cameras, tools, furniture, monitors. Things you bought to resell are inventory and belong somewhere else. Where the line falls for small or cheap items is your accountant's call, so log anything you are unsure of and tag it. A row is easy to filter out later and hard to recreate.
Does Slipsheet calculate depreciation?
No. Slipsheet turns receipts into reviewed rows. It does not assign asset classes, compute Section 179, or produce a multi-year schedule. Those decisions and that math belong to your accountant, who can work from the rows.
What do I hand my accountant?
The CSV or sheet with one row per purchase, plus the source files the source column points to: the email PDFs, the photos, the scanned paper slips. The rows answer what you bought and what it cost. The files back them up.
Is a card charge enough to log a purchase?
It proves the money left, and that is all. The receipt carries the date, vendor, total, and tax, and any shipping or fees on it. Whether those affect what you record for the asset is a question for your accountant, so keep the receipt and the row.