You know I was just thinking about what a mess doing my taxes was this year. Last year wasn’t so bad because I’d worked at the hospital part of the year before and also earned money from my websites. Last year though, all my income was from my websites and calculating everything was a pain in the butt.
I think I’m going to look into getting some kind of financial reporting software so I can keep track of my daily, monthly and yearly earnings in one place. I do have Excel on my computer, but I’ve just never really liked using that program.
Speaking of earnings mine are down so far this year. Ever since we got our Puppy last November my earnings have been a lot less. I find the puppy very distracting. She’s getting better at entertaining herself, but it’s still difficult to work on my sites with a dog dropping toys in my lap constantly or whining for attention. As a result I’ve been trying to work on more passive income earnings for my websites.
How do you get work done on your sites when you have a lot of distractions around?
Usually dogs wouldn’t be too much of a problem for me, because i’d get my kids to play with them when i’m working, and i’ll play with them on my break times.
If you already have Excel, it might be worth it just to take an afternoon and lay out a comprehensive spreadsheet that can just tally up expenses and revenues and whatnot. I’ve found this works great for my purposes….no need to get a fancy “dedicated” financial software for this.
It does get a bit confusing trying to keep up with PayPal, Google Adsense, Merchant Deposits, and other advertising payment management tools.
Quickbooks might be a great tool. while it might be ‘fancy’, it really isn’t.. I think it runs about $99 or so for the basic version and can do wonders for itemizing your credits/debits/expenses straight from your bank account.
At the end of the year, we just send that over to the tax guy and we’re good to go.
It’s so fun running a web site, or blog or pretty much any kind of internet community — but the accounting — what a pain!
Thanks.
It does get a bit confusing trying to keep up with PayPal, Google Adsense, Merchant Deposits, and other advertising payment management tools.
Quickbooks might be a great tool. while it might be ‘fancy’, it really isn’t.. I think it runs about $99 or so for the basic version and can do wonders for itemizing your credits/debits/expenses straight from your bank account.
At the end of the year, we just send that over to the tax guy and we’re good to go.