HELPFUL HINTS

Did you know?

It's very easy for most individuals and small business to keep all their records on Quicken. It's as easy to use as a manual check register.

Contrary to what you might have heard about the more popular software Quickbooks, most clients are better served by using Quicken. Unless you are an accountant or a professional bookkeeper and understand double entry bookkeeping, Quickbooks is not for you.

Most clients make many errors with Quickbooks. Then the accountant has a headache. It is usually faster to start from scratch rather than correct Quickbooks errors. Or the accountant has to "scale down" the Quickbooks data and convert it to the form the data would have been in had the client used Quicken from the start.

Save yourself and the accountant a lot of aggravation and use Quicken or simply write your check stubs by hand and let the accountant do the rest. Even though we are living in a very computerized world, the old fashioned paper and pencil approach may be perfect for you.

If you really do need to use Quickbooks or some similar general ledger type software be sure to consult with you accountant on how to proceed.

Other suggestions

Get annual summaries for your credit card expenses.

Get online access to your bank accounts.

Take advantage of online calendars to manage your appointments and record travel expenses.

Get letters and keep cancelled checks for charitable contributions.

Be very careful with your mail in the month of January when your tax documents arrive.

If you file schedule C as a self-employed person a full write-up is a must. Once a full write-up is done you are ready for an audit, just in case.