I was just wondering how people do their accounting do you hire people to do it? online? offline? do your own? use a program to help you? i need to start really getting on top of my accounting now that my money made online accounts for most of my wages and i declared myself self employed to the IR. I get confused with it all though, what to keep as reference to payments in terms of paying by paypal and credit cards not associated with the business account. And will your regular brick and mortar accountant get confused with all this online money flying about
I use quicken, well first I actually try to stay organized on a notepad for that day then put it all into quicken before I go to bed. I declare it all no sense in being stupid to save a couple bucks that's how they caught Al Capone haha! -Jason
Well I haven't made a dollar yet so I haven't actually had to think about that side of things. I studied accounting in highschool so I could keep a track via handwritten method. or via excel. I can go from journal entry to trial balance and then do financial reports. advice: learn tax law/ tax brackets for your country. make sure you set aside that tax,maybe in a separate bank account. At a most basic level record in excel doc expenses and income..and perhaps printouts of statements from (paypal or whatever payment processor you use)/bank statements/ad network affiliate statements. Keep the printouts for the required time. (in australia for example we have to by law keep legal /finance documents for upto 5 years. ) In excel itemise everything. i.e. income adsense clickbank design coding etc(however it applies) itemise expenses.. keep totals etc. declare totals to tax office. But your detailed records will prove handy if you get investigated. Here in Australia in our tax returns we only need to declare totals-total income(of course income is broken down into several major areas - like investments,general,social security etc) It's far too complicated and irrelevant to detail here anyway). It is important to keep records if they investigate you . Printing say once a week of all your "accounts" everywhere(paypal adsense whatever it is)-Also a good idea in case you can;t connect to the net or those accounts cannot be accessed becuase the sites themselves are down for maintenance or crashed etc. just a suggestion. Probably easier to just get myob or quicken.
cheers for that post, yeah i set up a savings account next to me business account that i will put what i would be paying in tax into. so basically its about keeping everything =D
Yea. Keep everything. btw i amended by post and added a bit more in. A hoarder's dream..lol I don't throw anything out if it can be useful-within reason.(I'm speaking in general-not just paperwork..lmao) oh boy..
i basically put some ink to paper .. this way i would atleast feel secure that my account details were at some place safe !! lol.. my comp crashes so very often these dyas
hehe, yeah im think about that too getting the old pen and paper out (if i can remember how to use them)
I use a combo of online, in my head, and on paper to manage it. I make the budget up paper mostly, but move things around online and specifiy them. I must admit I am less then perfectly organized, but it works for now. I don't do my taxes though, I have someone else do them. MAtt
Get some basic accounting software (myob or quicken, basic versions), you can also download pre-formatted spreadsheets for excel through excel itself from the our friend Bill. The second option may be worth a look at if you're just starting out Good Luck!
Initially use some simple excel spreadsheets that I made, and later transfer the information to Quickbooks works for me.
There is some good advice in this thread, but I have to put my 2 cents in. But be warned, I am an accountant, so I will be a little biased. First, any accountant that is any good at all will have seen all sorts of "interesting" accounting systems. So they shouldn't be confused by your paypal accounts and all that, but you will need to separate out what is business and what is not. Ideally you hire an accountant and let them take care of it. A good accountant will probably end up saving you more than you pay them, and could end up being a business advisor as well. If you don't want to go that route there are many good accounting programs out there that are relativley easy to use and don't cost much. Use one of those, and at the very least, have your books reviewed by an accountant at least once a year, and never do your own taxes!
I have tried to use Quickbooks several times now and end up every time dropping it because it takes so much overhead to keep up with it everyday. What I end up with is using online accounts, statements, and then creating some spreadsheets at the end of the year to tally everything up to do my taxes. But its only possible I think to do this is you keep your business totally separate from your personal finances. I have an LLC and so I have separate bank accounts, credit cards, insurance, etc. All I really have to do is make sure I keep the lines pure and then most of the information is readily determined from account statements. The biggest complication for me is credit card processing. It is hard to balance sales because of the percentage take out that happens when charges are transferred to my bank account. This is what was driving me crazy with Quickbooks. I simple sale would mean a half dozen transactions in Quickbooks... not very quick.