I want to be able to track my personal and business expenses and label things appropriately. I got two Quickbooks accounts for the past couple weeks to try them out - Soloprenuer and Quick Start and neither seem like a slam dunk.
I want to be able to:
track business expenses and label them with specificity (i.e. charitable donations is only available as a personal expense but all fundraising I do is through my business endeavors),
be able to clearly define certain business expenses (i.e. I buy food for events I host and there's no grocery option for Business on QB only meals with clients - I need to see for my own sanity and organization what I'm spending),
prepare for taxes
have something that UPDATES - my checking balance is currently 7 days old and hasn't synced
personal expense tracking - with customized or specific categories. I need to be able to see how much I'm spending on food delivery in a given quarter for my own budgeting
Would love for it to connect to my student loans and credit report
App and Desktop capability
I do not have employees so don't need something with payroll or anything like that. Would like to not spend more than $20/ month.
Quickbooks said their Solopreneur account is directly in line with the Schedule C tax form -- though I love the application for taxes, the IRS/ US tax code is NOT the model for organization and sanity so I do not want a tool that lives and dies by that lol.
@shilva You really shouldn't combine personal and business financials for this reason, I don't think any common software is set up to have you track them combined. You can use personal software to sort them separately. That can be made to work, but you miss out on the things business software offers.
No business software is going to encourage you to track personal with business.
What keeps you from having personal software like Budget with Buckets, and business software like Waveapps.com?
@family1stdad Going forward that could work for me possibly to split them entirely but I would love to have a snapshot of everything all at once AND most importantly m I need to backtrack to do expenses and taxes etc. I’m getting a credit card that will be business only but right now everything is mixed (messy!)
I am a professional visual artist and started an art class business 2 years ago so still getting this type of stuff sorted
@shilva When I helped someone in this situation I used Waveapps to import all the transactions, then sorted all the personal out to personal, leaving the business ones to categorize for taxes. In that situation there was mostly business transactions. Is your situation more business or more personal?
@family1stdad Maybe slightly more business for my situation but getting a handle of my personal expenses is also paramount.
Finances historically have not been my strong suit - I need to know in one place how much I’m spending on Ubers total (business and personal), monthly spend on food delivery, quarterly spend on aesthetics (hair/ salon etc).
Since I don’t have a separate business checking or card at this moment I’m trying to sort everything at once. I want to set up a system where I get caught up and then on a daily/ weekly basis go into an app and toggle things between personal / business and tag accordingly.
Having data for personal will help me implement behavior changes as well
@shilva I think YNAB may be the best for you right now. It's not going to have the business reports but from what you are saying the way you want to track this won't be report friendly anyway, as you want to track personal expenses as business categories. YNAB is the best software I know that is great for personal finances while allowing the most a little time track business expenses more granularly.
Sole proprietorships don't deduct charitable donations, any donations are personal not business.
If the groceries are for meals with clients that you are paying for, that's meals. If you are selling the meals to clients, then it's costs of goods sold.
@family1stdad Thank you!! I know that technically for taxes on the schedule C the charity donations are personal but as it’s through my business it doesn’t make sense for me to keep to organized like that. I’m wanting to create a system where I’m more financially tapped in outside of just getting my taxes done.
For groceries - same thing. This need I have is not just for taxes. If I’m doing a class where I provide art supplies and food, I need to know for profit / biz purposes how much I’m spending on each type of supply (including food) vs what I’m making so I have a better handle on what I’m netting per class.
@shilva You can break out categories even further for your records. You can track by client even. That's where business software is more fill featured. You aren't limited to just the tax categories
