Expense and Income Tracking

[AustrianOak82]

My wife is a CPA and curse clients who dont use it. Find a local CPA or beter yet a very good book keeper (will be cheaper) and pay to have them teach you a few times. Put it on a lap top you can go to there office they can teach you how to use it on your own machine help you set it up. Then you go home use it for few weeks or month then go back with questions and to learn more advanced reporting after you have few month info in it to look over. If you have a CPA you use for your taxes they may do it or recommend someone who does. Could also look into night course at local university or Community College.

You need to start using it if you are a full time business, even if its a side thing if you are reporting your income you want to track your write offs for your taxes.

Yeah, that's my thing. I am PT and only do about 6-8 a month. I wasn't sure if this was what I needed to try and learn to use.

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[Klink10]

I use Excel (free) and made up my own spreadsheets to account for everything. It's a learning experience so if time is of the essence it may not work for you. If you do try and use it I suggest getting the book titled "Teach Yourself Visually" by Nancy Muir. My version is the Microsoft Office Excel 2007. Good luck.

[dcjredline]

I was going to suggest Excel too. Your tax person can get your sheet by email and plug in the numbers they need from it. When I had a car audio business all the tax guy wanted at the end of the year was the summary anyway. $ in and $ out to where.

[BitterGreg]

Pretty self-explanatory.

The fact that you think it is, shows its not. The first thing to remember is a tax person and a bookkeeper/accountant do not always have the same priorities. Are you tracking this for tax purposes, or knowing the performance of the business? As mentioned, someone that is doing your taxes wants all the information from you to input it and complete the return. Quite a few couldn't care less if it is right or not, as their hands are washed of any issues because you provided them with the info. The bookkeeper "should" be concerned with making sure everything is in the correct spot to ensure your P&L and Balance sheet show the true performance of the business.

Quickbooks has quite a lot of functions, but that doesnt mean you have to use them, and you can even hide quite a few.

[eric04h]

I use excel. I downloaded a balance template that works pretty well, I just tweaked it to fit my needs and it automatically adds and subtracts my totals for me. I've attached a snapshot of what I made. This is only for my own tracking just so I can see when I have profit or losses each month, you can add more fields and categories to suit what you'd like to log. If you'd like a copy to use just shoot me a pm.

[BitterGreg]

Eric, that looks awesome, great job.