Advice About Keeping Accounts Needed

Hi Kris

If you have just started out in IM you need to tell the tax office that you are self employed - they expect to be told within 3 months of you starting your business otherwise they reserve the right to fine you £100.

Bare in mind that the date your business started will also determine what expenses you will be allowed to claim back against your profit.

You can claim various expenses against tax. You can also claim any losses you have made being self employed (not a LTD company so doesnt work if you have set IM business as LTD company) against income you have paid in a previous year (going back up to three years so if you were a 40% tax payer at some point and have made a loss in IM - not usual- you may get a tax refund).

Personally I wouldnt bother using software but thats because I use an excel spreadsheet

Hope this helps

Best wishes

Rach

Hi Kris:

I think, ultimately it depends on which country are you situated. This is because every country has their own taxes laws and regulations. For example, if you're based in UK, and your income mainly flow from US, there may be different treatments on the expenses that you can claim, or are they any regulations on foreign operations/foreign income. Have you set up a company <sole proprietor or limited company> for this purpose?

Ok. I can give you some suggestion to keep your accounts but just the basic ones coz I don't know to what extend your current situation is like.

For myself:

I do breakdown the details of the revenue and cost incurred relating to that particular source of revenue. Eg. As a affiliate marketer, if could have incurred PPC for your traffic. So, this is easy to understand. If you have your own products, you may have your revenue less of the whatever cost that you have incurred (writer cost, hosting, paid tools, autoresponder or membership and so on).

Well, what if you also have other monthly paid tools that you used for all the projects, you can do as follows.


Project A Project B Project C Project D Project E Total
Revenue
Cost

Profit xx

Fixed costs xx

Net profit xx

For my case, i keep my book in US dollar for simplicity. If you're in UK and earnings in US dollar, things may be a little complicated to explain here.

If you operate from home, depending on the tax laws, sometimes they have incentives/exemptions like partial of your home bills can also be claimed as expenses

Well, this is just a very brief explainations and I hope I didn't get you confused. If you need more info, just PM me. just to let you know, i was an auditor before but not anymore. So now, is just an accountant taking care of my own bills :p

Hi Kris,

I think you'll find very good small business accounting software that can help you. When you install such software, you'll run through a series of questions which are then used to help manage your enterprise.

In my case I use Quickbooks for many years, and accounting is a matter of handing a file at the end of the month to an accountant. I am sure such a program exists in the UK, with similar functions.

Success,
Sam