How to Use Microsoft Excel’s Double Declining Balance Depreciation Function

By Stephen Nelson

Making financial forecasts or performing investment analyses that needs to include double declining balance depreciation? Microsoft Excel can help. Excel’s DDB, or double declining balance, depreciation function lets you calculate 200% declining balance depreciation.

The DDB function calculates double-declining balance depreciation for an asset given the
cost, its salvage value, estimated economic life, the accounting period for which depreciation is being calculated, and, optionally, the factor at which the balance declines. (If you don’t include the optional factor argument, Excel sets this value to 2 indicating “double” declining balance.) The DDB function uses the following syntax:

DDB (cost, salvage, life, period, factor)

Suppose, for example, that you must calculate the double-declining balance depreciation for
equipment that costs $50,000, lasts five years, and will have a salvage value of $10,000 at
the end of the fifth year. To calculate the depreciation for the first year, you use the following formula:

=DDB (50000,10000,5,1)

The function returns the value 20000.00. To calculate the depreciation for the second year,
you use the formula

=DDB (50000,10000,5,2)

The function returns the value 12000.00.

NOTE: A common convention when using double-declining balance depreciation is to switch to straight-line depreciation at the point in time when straight depreciation exceeds declining balance depreciation. The DDB function doesn’t make this switch, but the VDB function does. Use it, therefore, if you want to use this convention.

CPA Stephen L. Nelson wrote the bestsellers Quicken and QuickBooks , and books about small business accounting and the popular downloadable do-it-yourself guides which have together sold more than one million copies.

Stephen L. Nelson is a Seattle-area CPA, the author of many bestselling books, and the editor of the forming an S corp online and the incorporating a business, the forming an LLC web sites.

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