Capital expenditure
In accounting, capital expenditure means cash spent acquiring or improving long-lived assets in the period — the investing outflow free cash flow subtracts.
- Layer
- Lexicon
- Defined in
- Lexicon
- Also called
- Capex
- Nearby
- 4
Authority
This definition follows ASC 230-10-45-13.
Every citation in this system, with the text we read and the date we checked it, is in US GAAP and where these rules come from.
The lesson that teaches this
Accounting, 0 to 1 — a free course taught end to end on one month of one company, with the spreadsheet exercises to work it yourself.
What it is not called
Each of these is a real word for a different thing. Using it here is what makes a product read as though it was built by someone who has not done the work.
- fixed asset
Nearby in the catalog
No component names this concept outright. These are the ones in its part of the system, which is a weaker claim — but a component nothing links to is a component nobody finds.
Terms this one depends on
Also in Fixed assets & leases
Work with this concept
The calculators that compute it and the ledger payloads that carry it. A definition is where a reader starts; these are where they go next.
- CapEx vs OpExCapital expenditure buys an asset that will serve for more than a year and is depreciated over that life; an operating expense is consumed in the period and hits the P&L in full immediately.Compare
- Journal entry for an equipment purchaseWhen equipment is bought, debit the fixed asset account for its full cost — price plus delivery and installation — and credit Cash or Accounts payable. Nothing is expensed on the day of purchase; the cost reaches the P&L as depreciation.Entry
Defined in Lexicon. This page is generated from that document, so the two cannot disagree.