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

Cateye112

Unknown

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