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Best Option for Tracking Income and Expenses [Edited]

jxwilliamson

I'm not sure that I need the full features of QuickBooks over Quicken or some other method of tracking my small business income and expenses. Looking forward to expert opinions and advice.

My setup

a) Hard money lender and I have a separate system for tracking the loan origination, payments, fees (NSF), interest collected, principal etc...

b) I have standard expenses building lease, phone system, internet, office supplies

c) Expenses that are common in my business foreclosure, attorney, CPA etc..

d) I have 4 employees (payroll is outsourced), one salary and 3 hourly plus my ownership draws. The company also provides health benefits

I do not need to generate and send invoices nor do I need to collect payments or process income related transactions facilitated by QuickBooks or Quicken. I think I just need a good way to enter and track my interest income and expenses for tax filing purposes.

What do you think is my best option?

Thank you,

Jason

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Comments

Frankx

Hi @jxwilliamson

Quick questions - how are you organized - are you an individual sole proprietor, a partnership (likely not) an S-Corp, or a C corp. And - assuming you use your CPA for tax return prep - have you spoken to him/her for recommendations that they prefer? (If not - that would be my suggested first step).

Frankx

Tom Young

Quicken is really only geared for business using Schedule C for tax reporting because in this situation all the transactions in your file are "yours." That is, income and expenses can be differentiated between personal and business, but every dollar of income and expense will be reflected on your income tax return. Transfers of cash to and from "personal" checking Accounts and "business" checking Accounts are not income or expense to the business or to you; it's all your money.

About the only way to accurately use Quicken if your business doesn't report taxes on Schedule C is to set up a completely separate file for the business activities vs. personal activities. Even in this "two data files" setup Quicken doesn't provide for all the equity accounts needed if partners or shareholders are involved.

In contrast, Quickbooks will handle S and C corporations, partnerships and multi-member LLCs.

If you report business income on Schedule C, have outside systems and reports that provide summary numbers to you, and all you want to do is compile these numbers into some sort of accounting system for reporting purposes, I'd think Quicken would work.

jxwilliamson

> @"Tom Young" said:
> Quicken is really only geared for business using Schedule C for tax reporting because in this situation all the transactions in your file are "yours." That is, income and expenses can be differentiated between personal and business, but every dollar of income and expense will be reflected on your income tax return. Transfers of cash to and from "personal" checking Accounts and "business" checking Accounts are not income or expense to the business or to you; it's all your money.About the only way to accurately use Quicken if your business doesn't report taxes on Schedule C is to set up a completely separate file for the business activities vs. personal activities. Even in this "two data files" setup Quicken doesn't provide for all the equity accounts needed if partners or shareholders are involved.
> In contrast, Quickbooks will handle S and C corporations, partnerships and multi-member LLCs.If you report business income on Schedule C, have outside systems and reports that provide summary numbers to you, and all you want to do is compile these numbers into some sort of accounting system for reporting purposes, I'd think Quicken would work.

What is the best way to manually input the business interest income into Quicken? Setup an offline checking account, non-cash asset or?

Tom Young

"What is the best way to manually input the business interest income into Quicken? Setup an offline checking account, non-cash asset or? "

If you're not really using the Quicken Account to track your actual business checking account, simply using it as a spot in which to periodically record cash interest income, then there's really not a lot to distinguish an offline checking account from a generic asset account, in terms of functionality.

In Quicken's Account Bar - the list of Accounts you've established in Quicken that's at the left or right side of the screen - a checking Account will be in the "Banking" section of the Account Bar, up at the top, and the asset Account will be in the "Property and Debt" section, down at the bottom.