Getting Your Books in Order

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When you are setting up your home business, you will need to determine a way to track your business income and expenses. This is important both for tax and accounting purposes, and so that you can always get a clear snapshot of your current business finances.

 

You can either hire someone to do your bookkeeping for you, do it yourself manually, or purchase software to do it on your computer. I would advise going with software because it is the easiest and cheapest option.

 

I use Quickbooks for my own business accounting, and have no hesitation recommending it to you.  It is an easy to use program, and they have a wizard that helps you set up your books correctly for your type of business right off the bat. It is a bit expensive, but given the time and hassle that it saves you it can wind up more than paying for itself…especially at tax time.

 

To learn more about Quickbooks or purchase it, you can go here:

Intuit QuickBooks 2007 Pro Edition for Windows - Financial Management - PC

 

If the brand new Quickbooks version is out of your price range right now, you can usually find an older version of it on Ebay for next to nothing. You’ll still get all the great features of the program, but you won’t have to pay as much for a slightly outdated version. Just be sure if you buy on Ebay that you are getting a valid, legal copy of the software.

 

The actual process of bookkeeping is beyond the scope of this article. The IRS offers advice on what expenses and income you will need to track and what receipts and documentation you will need to save for your business. You can learn more about the record keeping requirements for your home business here:

 

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=98575,00.html