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When starting a business, tracking your expenses and income can be extremely hard. However, It is VERY important and I recommend setting up your bookkeeping should be one of the very first tasks that you complete. According to the IRS, any personal income that you make that is over $400 is taxable. Therefore, you need to have all of your dollars in a row. See what I did there, ducks in a row, dollars. Hah. Okay, not too funny. My solution, Quickbooks Self Employed is only $10 dollars a month and WELL WORTH IT. However, you can sign up through my referral link here to save 50% for the first year. That means you'll only pay for $5.00 a month for the first year. Yes, I do get something out of the deal, but I have been using Quickbooks self employed for over 4 years and I would only recommend a product that I truly love and that I think makes my job easier. We all know it's super hard wearing "all the hats" in business. Why not simplify it.
Things Quickbooks Self Employed does to make your job easier:
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Connects with your sales channels like Etsy and PayPal.
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Categorize your expenses in a nice and neat way. You can even make "rules" so that it auto categorizes it which saves you time.
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Tracks your mileage with the app. Perfect for all those shipping business miles, or supply pick ups. Track them all!
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Easy reporting for tax reports needed for filling out a Schedule-C.
My favorite thing about Quickbooks Self Employed is that I only log in about once every two weeks to check my books and make sure everything is looking good. After the initial set up it's like it will do your expense/income tracking on auto-pilot. It really saves me time which ultimately allows me to work on other major important things in my business. Time is money, my friends.
TIP: I definitely recommend separating your business finances from your personal finances as early on in your business as you can. I did this by opening up a separate checking account that I set up my auto deposits to from Etsy and PayPal. I only used this account when using any business money - paying business bills, spending money, etc. This is great for when your business is still small. Making the leap to using a Credit Card for your business will be on how comfortable you are, however - it's not a bad idea to have a business credit card.
So. Sign up for quickbooks HERE: and save $5.00 a month for the first year.