The last blog looked at some of the more common allowable expenses. You can click on this link if you missed it. In this blog I will look at some of the ways you can record your income and expenses.
Most people are familiar with spreadsheets and this is possibly the easiest and most cost effective way to do it. You can use the first page to record the income, the second page for expenses and if you wish, although not necessary, a third page as a summary.
Free Spreadsheet
As promised, here is your FREE spreadsheet with all of this laid out for you and ready to use. This spreadsheets assumes you are self-employed.
In this fast paced world, even spreadsheets can be time consuming and making sure you hold onto all your receipts can be trying. This is when apps become an amazing addition to your life. I do sometimes have a love/hate relationship with apps (maybe something for a later blog) but one of my favourite all time apps ever is ReceiptBank.
Accounting Apps
You can take photos of your receipt or bill or whatever expenses it is you need to record and the app will download the picture, read it and enter all the information on for you. All you need to do is check that it is all correct and tick. ReceiptBank has links to many accounting software (which your accountant will be pleased about when the time comes for them to get them involved) but you can also download the recorded expenses as a spreadsheet if you wanted to review them without purchasing an accounting package. You can also email the expenses across to ReceiptBank and even just drag and drop.
There are lots of other similar apps like receipt bank but this seems to be the most popular choice for the moment. Most accounting packages such as Xero have similar functionality for recording expenses with the added benefit of creating sales invoices and uploading your business bank statements easily.
Invoices
A lot of this can be done on spreadsheets though. A detailed look into how to create sales invoices on spreadsheet can be found by following this link here. However, with Making Tax Digital (MTD) being rolled out in the hope of everything being digital, looking into different accounting packages might be a good idea.
So ReceiptBank and Xero are my current favourite apps for small micro businesses but if you have a look around on the internet, you will come across many that you can compare and contrast and choose one that is good for you and your business as it is at the moment including a free app called Wave.
Next Post
The next blog will look at how much tax you have to save up for and some more information on how MTD may affect you.
As always, if you would like any further details on this or any other accountancy matters, please follow this link:
An accountant and a Mum 