Editing Operating expense (section)

{{Short description|Ongoing cost for running a product, business, or system}}
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{{Accounting}}

An '''operating expense''' ('''opex'''){{efn|Also known as '''operating expenditure''', '''operational expense''', or '''operational expenditure'''.}} is an ongoing cost for running a product, business, or system.<ref>David Maguire, The business benefits of GIS : an ROI approach, 1st ed. (Redlands  Calif.: ESRI Press, 2008), http://roi.esri.com/. {{ISBN|978-1-58948-200-5}}</ref> Its counterpart, a ''[[capital expenditure]]'' (capex), is the cost of developing or providing non-consumable parts for the product or system. For example, the purchase of a [[photocopier]] involves capex, and the annual paper, [[toner (printing)|toner]], power and maintenance costs represents opex.<ref>{{cite book |author=Aswath Damodaran |title=Applied Corporate Finance: A User’s Manual |publisher=John Wiley and Sons |year=1999 |chapter-url=http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/AppldCF/derivn/ch5deriv.html |isbn=978-0-471-33042-4 |chapter=Chapter 5 - Discussion Issues and Derivations |url=https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/AppldCF/appldCF.htm |quote=Accountants draw a distinction between expenditures that yield benefits only in the immediate period or periods (such as labor and material for a manufacturing firm) and those that yield benefits over multiple periods (such as land, buildings and long-lived plant). The former are called operating expenses and are subtracted from revenues in computing the accounting income, while the latter are capital expenditures and are not subtracted from revenues in the period that they are made. Instead, the expenditure is spread over multiple periods and deducted as an expense in each period - these expenses are called depreciation (if the asset is a tangible asset like a building) or amortization (if the asset is an intangible asset like a patent or a trade mark).}}</ref> For larger systems like businesses, opex may also include the cost of workers and facility expenses such as rent and utilities.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Expense vs. Expenditure: What's the Difference? |url=https://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/financial-management/expense-expenditure.shtml |newspaper=Oracle Netsuite |last1=Com |first1=Netsuite }}</ref>