im new to been self employed and dont want to get into trouble when it comes to filling in my self accesment,
so im just wondering how everyone else logs/files there income!
this is what im thinking of doing, writing this down each week on a peice of paper...
Money earned for week ending sat 2/10/10
then a list of all my customers that week with how much they paid me, and a total £ underneath that!
is it really nessarcary to write all this down every week? or can i just get away with giving a total earnings on my tax return each year?
thankyou in advance for taking the time to answer me!
Use a spreadsheet.
I keep details of every transaction on one in MS Works.
I start top left with the first day of my accounting year and work from there.
First three Columns "DATE" "ADDRESS" "PRICE" Second three columns "DATE" "ADDRESS" "PRICE" again up to the end of month one. ! allow the column to be 30 rows (doubt I will do any more jobs than that in a day).
Underneath the first price column (around row 35) I have the formula =sum(c3:c35) . That will give your total for day 1. In the f column I have =sum(f3:f35) etc etc (you can paste them in when setting up a sheet and the column should change with each paste).
For month 2 I start at cell A41 as I leave a few rows blank between the months for clarity.
Over to the right of the spreadsheet I list a summary of each month broken down into days with their totals. This is the bit I print out for the accountant. He is not interested in seeing the individual transactions.
It sounds complex but it's quite simple really.
The beauty of it is that I just paste the sheet into the following years sheet and empty the data by pasting a blank cell into all the individual transaction cells. No need to set it all up again. I should really set up a template I suppose.
Because I make it easy for my accountant, his fees aren't so huge.
