Anything Aberdeen spend money on becomes an asset of the club. The payment for these assets may happen the day they are bought, or may be spread across the life of a loan, or a mortgage.
The club's accounts show the amount written off each year over the expected useful life an asset. So what the club "fixtures and fittings" are written off over 5 to 10 years. So a car costing say £20,000 would be written off over 5 years and would hit the books for £4000 per year. For more substantial assets like the stands or the executive boxes the write-off is done over a longer period of time from 5 up to 40 years depending on how long they think the asset will last.
Because these things are written off of such a long period the figures tend to vary very little on a year by year basis, and there is little that can be done to reduce the costs.
The graph below shows that the costs were stuck at about £400,000 every year up to 2007. The recent rise comes from the club getting the ground revalued, not from any investment in new assets. The ground is now valued at £12.8m, compared to £9.2m in 2006.
The depreciation figure of course comes from the total assets of Aberdeen. The graph below shows the figures for the total of these assets. The jump in the 2007 figure came from Pittodrie being re-valued upwards.
