real estate depreciation

[E_Ray]

I'm having some problems with depreciation.  Bought a rental house and had a CPA do my taxes that first year.  The purchase price of the building is 39,912.  Turbotax and my CPA both came up with the same number for the first year (partial) depreciation.  However the next year (first full year) Turbotax is coming up with 1488 while my CPA (he included a sheet for the next year depreciation) shows 1451, which is what I'm coming up with also for 39,912 over 27.5 years, SL MM.

There are other depreciation items too I haven't even gotten to yet--if those used an alternate method than what TurboTax automatically uses, is there a way to manually enter the depreciation for items that were placed in service in previous years?

Finally, I would like to track this on my own for the life of the different items--is there a good program people recommend for calculating depreciation besides just seeing how Turbotax does it when I file taxes? I am using excel to track income and expenses.

Thanks!

[E_Ray]

Actually I did figure out why they were off--TurboTax asks for the purchase date, so I entered the date I actually bought the property.  This is the date used for "date placed in service".  But it was not rent-ready yet and I fixed it up.  So the date the CPA was using was when we got an occupancy permit.  TurboTax should clarify that.  BTW, this is for tax year 2014 so it may have been clarified by now.

[PaulaM]

Thanks for the feedback. TurboTax does ask the purchase date and the date the property was placed in service (available date) in the Property Profile section when you first set up a property. If you entered your property directly in the Asset/Depreciation section, then you are correct in that the software says purchased or acquired date only. I can see how this is confusing.