Shoe boxes

[brmax]

Shoe boxes, 2 for the office and shop with tags minor under $200 and 2 others with tags under $500
With this information where is the best place for receipts of new needles and others like bobbins specifically.
Is this an ok placement or can someone give ideas towards a better description for a professional, as the wheel dolley can be quite stacked with boxes  :)

Floyd

[byhammerandhand]

with 25 reads and no responses, I guess I'm not the only one saying, "What you talkin' 'bout?"

[brmax]

Thanks Keith, if I put taxes nobody would reply either, how do I know. experience!

same o same o

[byhammerandhand]

I use Quickbooks for all my income and expenses.

The saving grace of it is that I've done onsite work in 3 states and in my home state, 5 different counties where each county has its separate tax rate.   When I file monthly, I need to report how much income and sales tax collected by county.   In addition, I do a fair amount of work that is tax exempt.  Labor on personal property (furniture) is taxable; labor on real property (kitchen cabinets, for example).  It would drive me crazy to get all that together each month without Quickbooks (or a spreadsheet).  QB also allows me to record daily mileage or auto expenses.   

I may have said this before.   When I was in HS I got behind in Latin and struggled.   When I got to college, I was determined to never get behind in French.   I treat accounting like learning a language -- NEVER get behind -- don't go to bed until the paperwork for the day is done.

[MinUph]

Floyd,
  When I was a one man business and before I started with software I used a bound leger. One side of the opened page was for income IE: Job, Tax, Total in three columns. While the other side of the open book page was expenses. Any and all went in there for office supplies, supplies, etc. Anything that went into a job was supplies. All receipts went into folders and were placed in a box at the end of the year. The ledger was added up quarterly for sales tax and yearly for income and expenses. I only needed something out of the box on one occasion. But it was there.

[gene]

You can think in terms of "What if I get audited?" They may want to see my shop expense receipts. If you have all shop expense receipts in one manila envelope that will make it easier for you. They may want to see my vehicle related receipts. They may want to see my new material supply receipts.

I keep it simple but want to keep things easy and available if I am audited. Everything on my Schedule C needs to have documentation.

I think you can throw away receipts after 7 years. Check on that to make sure before you do.

gene

[byhammerandhand]

Yes, for physical receipts, I keep them in a file folder and put them in a manila envelope at the end of the year.   But I probably don't buy as many materials as most of you , since I do repair work.     Everything is paid for by credit card, rarely by check, and almost never by cash.   So I have the old credit and bank statements to back up.     I think the IRS says you need to keep receipts, but they don't specify that they really need to be organized.

My mother used to help my grandfather with his taxes.  They'd  borrow a 100 key mechanical adding machine and go through several boxes of sales receipts for a dozen eggs, a peck of tomatoes, two cabbages, etc.   It was scary.

In the '70s I worked at Allstate Insurance home office helping implement database management systems.   Insurance companies really run on data.   I can remember the accounting department with real spreadsheets --paper occupying half a desk and filled with pencilled-in numbers..   I'm sure they were glad when VisiCalc came out and even gladder when General Ledger systems got installed.  My younger brother was an accountant for a Fortune 500 company and they ran the whole company's finances  on Excel for a while.  With the way those systems crashed, that was even scarier.