Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Word of the Day: Capex (capital expenditure)

Word of the Day WhatIs.com
Daily updates on the latest technology terms |August 30, 2017
Capex (capital expenditure)

A capital expenditure (Capex) is money invested by a company to acquire or upgrade fixed, physical, non-consumable assets, such as a building, a computer or a new business. Generally, there are two types of capital expenses: purchases made to maintain existing levels of operation within a company and purchases intended to foster future growth.

 

A capital expenditure can be tangible, such as a copy machine, or it can be intangible, such as a patent. In many tax codes, both tangible and intangible capital expenditures are counted as assets because they have the potential to be sold if necessary.

To qualify as a capital expense, an asset's usefulness must exceed one year. In the United States, the length of depreciation is based on the number of years the asset is likely to be useful. For example, if a company purchases a fleet of servers for its data center, the value would depreciate over a five year period.

Capex can be compared to Opex, which stands for operational expenditure. Operational expenditures are used up during the same fiscal year they are purchased. If a company decided to spend money with Amazon Web Services (AWS) instead of purchasing servers, that expenditure would be operational and could only be deducted during the year in question.

Quote of the Day

"In the simplest sense, capital expenditures are single payments in exchange for goods or services, while operational expenditures are ongoing expenses paid to maintain a service." - Meredith Courtemanche

 

Trending Terms

Opex
ROI
enterprise asset management
cost management
capacity planning
business impact analysis

 
Learning Center

Capital budgeting software helps manage complex investments
Read how capital budgeting software can help you plan and maintain assets, invest in new assets and get Capex under control.

Define CapEx and OpEx as making sense of dollars
Reframe the OpEx versus CapEx debate to understand how CapEx and OpEx best work together. Not every IT service is best served in data centers, and not everything is easier in cloud.

Determine IT operating costs to show the value of cloud migration
A cloud migration plan requires that admins calculate IT operating costs. Opex isn't as stable a figure as Capex, but it's more comprehensive for the cloud.

A CTO's IT spending strategy for a fast-growing platform startup
Brian Morgan, CTO at fast-growing platform startup, Catalant, says his IT spending strategy is built on AWS, open source software -- and business goals.

ROI template helps calculate UCaaS costs, benefits
Total cost of ownership is just one component of a UCaaS ROI template. Companies should also calculate the positive impact to business processes.

Quiz Yourself

In the general ledger, accounts _______ shows money owed to a business by customers who have made purchases on credit.
a. payable
b. receivable
Answer

 

 

 

Stay In Touch
For feedback about any of our definitions or to suggest a new definition, please contact me at: mrouse@techtarget.com

 

Visit the Word of the Day Archives and catch up on what you've missed!

 

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1 comment:

capexplan said...

Thanks for writing a blog that highlights the importance of capital expenditure software to track capital expenditures of companies. Similarly, we at Capexplan, is an enterprise capital (and operational) expenditure planning, authorizing, and tracking software. It enables companies of any size to rapidly allocate capital, create capex/opex requests, and submit them for approval. Capexplan also comes with all the tools to help you track where your money is going and why. To know more, visit us today!