How Do I Record Expenses?
Tracking your business expenses
Nobody likes paperwork, but it's crucial to keep track of how much your spending to be able to both see your "Profit and Loss" numbers, and claim deductibles for tax purposes. There are plenty of tools both online and offline to help keep organized, but sometimes those solutions can be cumbersome to the smaller self employed businesses, with too many options and just overall difficult to use. After searching around for different solutions for my own use, I decided it was best to create my own tool to track simple expenses on the go, rather then having a stack of receipts to go through at the end of the tax year (after promising myself that I wouldn't let them pile up ...)
Mobile Ready Solution
If you register as a contractor with us, Canadian Homeowner Network, you'll have access to our built in, easy to use, Company Purchases tool. It's available on both desktop and mobile versions of the website with a simple interface. You can snap a picture of the receipt right form your phone, enter in the vendor and add an itemized list of the items you purchased. If you need more details, there are textboxes for a reference number, related job, or notes for individual items. If you in a hurry, all you need to enter is the vendor title and the entry will be saved in the database for you to fill out later.
Predefined List of Expense Accounts
To keep things easy, we already predefined a standardized list of expense accounts that are very similar to the ones you'll find when filing your taxes with the CRA. These accounts can be renamed or you can add your own if your unsure of what category to use for a particular purchase.
Easily Export into Excel
When tax time does come (and it always does!), you'll be ready to impress your accountant with a nicely formatted excel spreadsheet that includes a summary and detailed list of your expenses for the year. All your purchases can be exported into an excel spreadsheet from the Reports page inside your Canadian Homeowner Network account.
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