5.  Software Development Costs

The Company has capitalized certain costs for software developed or obtained for internal use during the application development stage as it relates to specific contracts. The amounts capitalized include external direct costs of services used in developing internal-use software and for payroll and payroll-related costs of employees directly associated with the development activities.  

The following table presents details of our software development costs for the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2017:

Software development costs are being amortized on a straight line basis over their estimated useful life of two years.

During the years ended December 31, 2018, we recorded amortization expense for software development costs of $326,631 and $315,663, respectively which is included in depreciation and amortization in the consolidated statement of operations.

During the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2017, we recorded impairment charges of $0 and $417,816, respectively, related to our software development costs as a result of customer contracts that became impaired.

The estimated future amortization expense of software development costs as of December 31, 2018 is as follows: