Anything Hearts 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 £350,000 every year up to 2004. The recent rise comes from the club getting the ground revalued, not from any investment in new assets. The blip in 2005 again came from a view that the ground was worth more than previously expected and that the depreciation for earlier years had been miscalculated.
