Just wondering how everyone keeps up with expense receipts. Mostly online purchase digital receipts and some paper receipts.
I started selling on Ebay and Amazon in 2015 so I'm getting all my tax info together now. I use godaddy bookeeping which is linked to my accounts. It does a great job of keeping up with income/expenses. I just go in once a month and make sure everything is in the correct category. It usually does a good job with sorting but sometimes it'll put an expense in the wrong category. Overall it's a great program. I started thinking if I were to get audited, I'm sure the IRS is going to want receipts for everything showing in godaddy.
99% of my purchases for office supplies, inventory and all other business expenses are made online and the receipt is emailed to me. The way I'm tracking it now, is I have labels in Gmail labeled office expenses, inventory, advertising and so on. Each time I make a purchase, I just drag the email receipt in the corresponding label in Gmail. If I do purchase something locally, I keep the paper receipt in an accordion file labeled expenses.
I use the same label system in Gmail to track inventory along with and Excel spreadsheet. I have 20 items that I have listed for sale, each item has a label in Gmail. Each time an item sells, I get an email from either Ebay or Amazon. I drag that email to the corresponding label and at the end of the month, I count up how many and what items sold and I add it manually to my excel spreadsheet. It seems like alot but I'm in the habit of it now and it flows well.
This year 2016, I plan on buying and selling vehicles, fourwheelers, and boats locally to earn extra money in addition to my online sales. I'll claim this income in 2017 and will need to track receipts as well. Like my online business, parts that I buy to repair vehicles are 99% online and the receipt is emailed to me.
This is where I'm getting stuck. Should I keep and modify the FREE Gmail label system to account for expenses of buying and selling, or should I seek another option, which from what I see, most cost money?
Basically I would have to a master label in Gmail named Buying/Sellling 2016, then make three labels under that named Vehicles, Boats and Fourwheelers. Then lets say I bought a 99 Ford Ranger, I would go in and add a sub label under vehicles named 99 Ford Ranger. Each time I bought a part to repair the Ranger, I would drag the receipt from online to the 99 Ford Ranger label. I would have to do this with each vehicle I bought. If I purchased a part locally, I would keep have to keep track of the paper receipt somewhere or I thought of taking a picture of it and emailing it to myself.
What I'm doing not works and it's free but are there any other options that are painless? How does everyone else keep track of these things? I'm just thinking if I ever expanded to 40 parts and sold 20 vehicles in a year I would have quite the amount of labels in Gmail. I like simple and easy.
I feel like I spend alot of time keeping track of receipts, expenses, etc than I do actually enjoying buying and selling.
I started selling on Ebay and Amazon in 2015 so I'm getting all my tax info together now. I use godaddy bookeeping which is linked to my accounts. It does a great job of keeping up with income/expenses. I just go in once a month and make sure everything is in the correct category. It usually does a good job with sorting but sometimes it'll put an expense in the wrong category. Overall it's a great program. I started thinking if I were to get audited, I'm sure the IRS is going to want receipts for everything showing in godaddy.
99% of my purchases for office supplies, inventory and all other business expenses are made online and the receipt is emailed to me. The way I'm tracking it now, is I have labels in Gmail labeled office expenses, inventory, advertising and so on. Each time I make a purchase, I just drag the email receipt in the corresponding label in Gmail. If I do purchase something locally, I keep the paper receipt in an accordion file labeled expenses.
I use the same label system in Gmail to track inventory along with and Excel spreadsheet. I have 20 items that I have listed for sale, each item has a label in Gmail. Each time an item sells, I get an email from either Ebay or Amazon. I drag that email to the corresponding label and at the end of the month, I count up how many and what items sold and I add it manually to my excel spreadsheet. It seems like alot but I'm in the habit of it now and it flows well.
This year 2016, I plan on buying and selling vehicles, fourwheelers, and boats locally to earn extra money in addition to my online sales. I'll claim this income in 2017 and will need to track receipts as well. Like my online business, parts that I buy to repair vehicles are 99% online and the receipt is emailed to me.
This is where I'm getting stuck. Should I keep and modify the FREE Gmail label system to account for expenses of buying and selling, or should I seek another option, which from what I see, most cost money?
Basically I would have to a master label in Gmail named Buying/Sellling 2016, then make three labels under that named Vehicles, Boats and Fourwheelers. Then lets say I bought a 99 Ford Ranger, I would go in and add a sub label under vehicles named 99 Ford Ranger. Each time I bought a part to repair the Ranger, I would drag the receipt from online to the 99 Ford Ranger label. I would have to do this with each vehicle I bought. If I purchased a part locally, I would keep have to keep track of the paper receipt somewhere or I thought of taking a picture of it and emailing it to myself.
What I'm doing not works and it's free but are there any other options that are painless? How does everyone else keep track of these things? I'm just thinking if I ever expanded to 40 parts and sold 20 vehicles in a year I would have quite the amount of labels in Gmail. I like simple and easy.
I feel like I spend alot of time keeping track of receipts, expenses, etc than I do actually enjoying buying and selling.