Fundamentals of Financial Accounting 4th Edition by Fred Phillips,Robert Libby,Patricia Libby

Exercise 9

Preparing Depreciation Schedules for Straight-Line and Double-Declining-Balance
To make some extra money, you've started preparing templates of business forms and schedules for others to download from the Internet (for a small fee). After relevant information is entered into each template, it automatically performs calculations using formulas you have entered into the template. For the depreciation template, you decide to produce two worksheets-one that calculates depreciation and book value under the straight-line method and another that calculates these amounts using the double-declining-balance method. The templates perform straightforward calculations of depreciation and book value, when given the cost of an asset, its estimated useful life, and its estimated residual value. These particular templates won't handle disposals or changes in estimates-you plan to create a deluxe version for those functions. To illustrate that your templates actually work, you enter the information used to produce the depreciation schedules shown in Exhibit 9.6, with Cedar Fair and Six Flags as examples.
Although you're confident you can use appropriate formulas in the spreadsheet to create a template for the straight-line method, you're a little uncertain about how to make the double declining-balance method work. As usual, you e-mail your friend Owen for advice. Here's what he said:

Required:
Create the spreadsheet templates to calculate depreciation and book value using the straight-line and double-declining-balance methods. Demonstrate that the template works by reproducing the schedules in Exhibit 9.6.
TIP: To switch between displaying cell formulas and their values, press CTRL and ~ (tilde) at the same time. Also, Use Excel's help feature to obtain further information about the IF function.