Are you a freelancer, 1099er or a
participate in the growing gig economy?
If so, you might find that trying to keep track of all your business expenses can be a daunting task
That's why, as a freelancer myself, about a year ago, I signed up for Quickbooks Self-Employed and
I'm going to give you my full review in this video.
Hey everyone. This is Kyle from Dyer News and Money@30
and today I'm going to give you an overview of Quickbooks Self-Employed and, more importantly. share with you
how it allowed me to save money on my taxes and make running my business easier overall.
As I mentioned, I first signed up for Quickbooks Self-Employed just over a year ago
The initial reason for that was that I had just made it through tax time and
realized that that was just a disaster trying to go through would find everything I needed in order to complete my tax returns
So after that, it was actually my father who happens to do my taxes
that recommended I look into some sort of service that I could use to keep track of everything
Around that same time, I actually heard an ad on a podcast for a Quickbooks Self-Employed and even included a promo code so I could save a few dollars
Anyway, I used Quickbooks for the entire year and then, when tax time came this past April
I have to say, I crushed it
Because I could easily compile all of my business expenses for itemization, my wife and I actually ended up getting a tax refund last year, which is crazy
So before I go much further, let me back up and get into some of the features a Quickbooks Self-Employed
So the first section of Quickbooks Self-Employed is transactions
Basically, when you get started with Quickbooks, you'll be able to link your credit card, debit card, and other accounts
and then view transactions across all of those different platforms.
what's great about this is that you'll be able to label all of your different transactions as personal business or even split them between two different types
For business transactions you can actually go in and further categorize them which will come in handy during tax time
Admittedly, going through each of your transactions one by one can be a bit tedious,
which is why Quickbooks allows you to set Rules
But adding a Rule, purchases from certain vendors or locations will automatically be categorized for you in the future
Better yet, you can actually have your rules apply the past transactions,
which could save you a decent amount of time. Of course I should also note that you can use the Quickbooks app
to categorize your transactions as personal or business by swiping left or right.
Yes, it's like tinder for your finances
The next section I want to talk about is Mileage
Now, as a freelance writer, I don't do a ton of driving for my job
But there have been times where I've take a road trip for an article I was writing or driven to the airport for a business trip and these all count as business mileage
And in case you don't know where business mileage can actually be quite lucrative. In fact, last year the rate was 54 cents per mile
which obviously can add up quite quickly. So in my case the times that I have used business mileage
I've done it all manually by looking my odometer when I leave,
checking again when I get back, and writing down the difference and entering it into Quickbooks
However, if you do drive a lot for your business you might want to check out the Quickbooks app which actually has an auto tracker
that could save you some hassle
So the next section is Taxes, which as I mentioned, was one of the main reasons
I decided to buy the software. If you're not currently paying quarterly taxes, and you're not even familiar with them,
first of all you might want to check out the article John wrote for dire news which I'll link to in the description below
Basically idea of quarterly taxes is that you prepay your tax bill up front by making four payments throughout the year. Of course the hard part here is guessing exactly
how much you should be paying, because who knows how much they'll make from month to month?
This is where Quickbooks is helpful
because it'll actually estimate your quarterly tax payments based on your business income versus your business expenses and also figuring in things like mileage
Of course just because you're freelancer doesn't necessarily mean that you need to pay quarterly taxes
so there's also support for just regular yearly taxes as well.
The next section I want to talk about Invoices, which as the name implies, makes it really easy to send out invoices to your clients
In fact in addition to just sending out invoices you can also sign up to receive
Payments through Quickbooks as well. However you should be aware that this service will take 2.9% plus an additional
25 cents out of your earnings. The last section we have discuss is Reports
Incidentally this is where a small gripe of my father's comes into play. When we were doing my taxes,
I realized I couldn't find a great way to export all of my data from Quickbooks and upload it into
Turbotax, which he was using the file for me.
What's weird about this is that both programs are owned by the same people so you think it would be a little bit easier to do
That said it was really easy to generate a number of reports including a spreadsheet with all of my different spending categories
that I really came in handy when I was itemizing my deductions
It should also be know that just because I couldn't find the export for Turbotax doesn't
necessarily mean that the option isn't there. So as you can probably tell, overall, I feel like Quickbooks Self-Employed is a great tool for
freelancers and entrepreneurs, and one that comes at a very affordable price.
In fact, right now the site is actually offering 50% off for your first six months
So I hope you found my review and personal experience with Quickbooks to be insightful,
and for more information be sure to check out the description box below where I'll have a link to my full written review on Dyer News
Thanks for watching and good luck on your own adventures in freelancing!