Career Business Accounting and Small Side Business

Cateye112

My husband has a full-time job that sometimes requires him to travel. His employer has it set up so that everything but airfare has to be paid for then reimbursed. 

M husband also recently began a small side business, which he runs out of our home. I have trying to set up Quicken Small Business to properly reflect the accounting but am finding it challenging. I have looked for articles and videos but most only show one or the other. Does anyone else deal with this? If so, how do you separate the accounting for it?

Unfortunately, despite my request, my husband used both his business accounts and our personal banking and credit card accounts for his side business. Add to that that I have had nothing but problems with Quicken since I upgraded this year and I have an end of the year mess. I told him going forward that EVERYTHING needs to be kept separate, this is ridiculous. Anyway, my file is corrupted so while I can use it, I can't use the mobile app. At this point, I just want to get everything situated for our taxes and then I will address that. Sorry, I am getting off on a tangent.

So my original question... How do you separate/ categorize your accounts or transactions?

GeoffG

I think you will find Tags to address most of what you are looking for, for business reimbursement and business expense identification.  You don't say what version you using, but assuming HBRP, then you will find a robust set of business categories.  Then you would only need tags for full-time business reimbursements.

If you suspect your file is corrupt, run a File>File Operations>Validate to ID and resolve issues.  As a side note, I would recommend suspending the use of mobile cloud sync.

Cateye112

GeoffG said:

I think you will find Tags to address most of what you are looking for, for business reimbursement and business expense identification.  You don't say what version you using, but assuming HBRP, then you will find a robust set of business categories.  Then you would only need tags for full-time business reimbursements.

If you suspect your file is corrupt, run a File>File Operations>Validate to ID and resolve issues.  As a side note, I would recommend suspending the use of mobile cloud sync.

How does this affect taxes? Is it as simple as pulling a report based on tag assignment? I just want to keep it as separate as possible.

Unknown

I have been a Home and Business user since '99.  I have used most version and now use the most current HBRP.  I have never had any issue with a corrupt file; however, I do not use the product for online payments or reminders (I do connect to multiple banks and finance companies to download transactions daily).  I also do not use the mobile version.  The comments I see about corrupt files all seem to have a common theme and that revolves around cloud sync'g.  I suggest all users to just use the software for accounting.
Cateye112, I suggest you start with a fresh clean file.  Set up personal and business accounts.  Quicken has preselected tax items associated with categories.  Business categories are mapped to schedule C primarily whereas non-business categories are mapped to typical 1040 items.  Tags can be helpful, but the ability to generate really good customized reports centered around tags is very limited and I would suggest using categories as the primary segregation and use tags just to augment.  The are great built-in reports.  I caution you when using invoices, you must create a payment from the invoice form before you accept a payment transaction into let's say your business checking account.  There is a little know issue with the software and balance sheet reports how it recognizes payments.  Good luck.

Cateye112

Robert Freeman said:

Quicken has preselected tax items associated with categories.  Business categories are mapped to schedule C primarily whereas non-business categories are mapped to typical 1040 items.  

Hi Robert,
Since my husband was reimbursed for many supplies, I have been able to avoid categorizing many of the old transactions as simply reimbursable. However, there are some items that are part of start up like his computer, monitors, and equipment. For having a small business platform, I feel like the given categories are quite limited. Therefore, I am struggling to know how to separately categorize the supplies vs the equipment. I have one for supplies but not sure how to categorize the equipment itself. Everything I am reading says it needs to be depreciated but some of them are not very expensive at all, like his soldering iron or circuit board holder. Others, like his computer, is a little more expensive... though I don't know if that matters. 

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
Heather