QuickBooks Self-employed: Is it right for you?

Hi there, Linda Artesani, Artesani Bookkeeping. I thought it'd be good today to talk a little bit about QuickBooks Online Self-Employed version. It's a version of QuickBooks Online that's much stripped down. It's very inexpensive, and from my perspective— this is my opinion only— I think it's really great for that small business owner that For example, my business. I have a business that I have to track and I teach yoga. So I'm a yoga teacher. It's my fun job. Not that my bookkeeping job isn't fun, but it's kind of like a hobby kind of job and I do generate some income and I spend probably what I make on trainings and things like that. So what I like about the software for me to track is that it can track the income so I know where I'm at and it tracks my expenses when I spend money on trainings or the studio I teach. If you have to wear a certain uniform or anything yoga related, maybe I buy essential oils that I use in the class, things like that. So let's go to my self-employed product. So here we are in my, my exact program. And you can see that I've got my income here and my expenses. So this is the dashboard. So I've already set it up. I've already connected my bank accounts. And this is what you would see when you first log in. So it's very, very stripped down. There's not a lot to this program, but it really doesn't cost a lot. So this is a great program for people who use file Schedule C. So this is what the program is designed for. It has a preset chart of accounts. You can't change them. And Schedule C is an IRS form that accompanies your 1040, and it helps you determine your business net income or loss. So it's for small business. This is why I would not recommend, even if you're a sole proprietor, which is what this would generally go for, if you're a sole proprietor and you want more robust accounting system, I would go for Simple Start or even something more that will give you more, more reporting and more flexibility. But this is for that little small business that maybe you have that you want to invoice for, you want to track your expenses that maybe you just spend on a credit card, which is what I do, and really track your mileage. So it's really stripped down to these basic things that you would need for this little small venture that you have. And it's— what's nice about it is you can add your bookkeeper or your tax professional. You can buy it in a bundle and connect to TurboTax and just do your own taxes. It's quite a nice little feature. And what I really like using it for is it lets me track my quarterly taxes. So they actually— this program actually does the math for me. So there's no surprise at the end of the year where the accountant's like, did you pay your estimated taxes? And you have no clue what to pay because you just started this venture. It allows you to put these items in, your income and your expenses, and it helps you start to figure it out what you need to pay each quarter. And it's part of the program. It just learns as it goes. And it will help you with, you know, avoiding getting any of those late fees if you don't pay the right amount. It reminds you to pay them, which is wonderful, and it helps you to organize. So a lot of people, when they start a small venture like this, they don't organize. They just jump in and really get into the business and they don't organize. This has a feature in it where you can actually do invoicing. So let's go to— first thing I notice, I got 20 transactions. I'm going to show you how easy this is. I'm going to hit Review Now. So I've already connected my bank account and my credit cards. I'm going to come in here and Review Now, and this is how easy it is. So here's where I paid extra to get a good seat on Southwest Airlines, but that's a personal trip, so I'm just going to click Personal. Southwest Airlines, it's a personal trip. So we're, we're going to travel up to Philadelphia for our granddaughter's graduation. Points rewards from a credit card, personal. Payment on credit card, personal. My landscaper who cuts my grass, personal. So this is because it's a sole proprietorship, it's all under my Social Security number. This is why all this is kind of intermingled, but this is a way to track it. And then Carter's obviously is for my grandson. And again, we're back at the pool guy, the zoo, my daughter was here. It's all the rest is personal. So there's not a lot of business transactions in this particular business for me. So now I've cleaned off my whole list, which is wonderful. You get a tab over here for miles. You can actually track your miles driven to and from your, if it's applicable for your job. So that's here. You can start to track it. You can actually download an app called MileIQ, and I'll put that in the notes, and it'll track it for you. What's really creepy is it knows the car I drive. So not sure if I put that in there or not, or if it just knows it. It's kind of a— It's creepy. Kind of scary things that you get. Here's where it's starting to calculate my taxes. So it went by my first quarter. Apparently I spent more than I made, or vice versa. I did pay for a pretty big conference that I'm going to, and that might be why it's zero here. It's seeing my income, so it's starting to see my income, but it's telling me I don't need to pay it because probably because of the conference. So as I go through here, it'll start to calculate what it thinks I'm gonna make from my business income and the profit. So it's actually showing me my profit. and what they think I'm going to make. It actually doesn't know that I'm going to be cutting back on my classes this year because the other business I call my big girl job, that one's really doing well. So I can come over here and do annual. It's just a nice way to see, seeing my deductions. I can see what I've been putting in, and there's my conferences, the most of this right here. It sees my total income and it sees my expenses, so it's telling me I don't need any taxes for this. You've got places in here for reports, profit and loss, and these are the only reports you can get in this program. It's very, very particular. And it's going to tell you how you can check out your tax summary, your profit and loss, see what you've been spending the money on. Pretty much in here, here's my conference, here's maybe some supplies I did buy. I teach a yoga class with myofascial release, so it's a yin class, yin style yoga with myofascial release, and I just spent a pretty good chunk of change on the balls that we use for that. So that's also used for work. A little bit of car and truck, that might be a little bit of mileage, I'm not sure, and then some little bit of travel, which is, you know, I use my points for travel. So that's how you can track your, your, how your business is doing. So this is what's great about it, especially you may start here with your business and grow out of it. So there's, it's got a lot, a lot to offer for this program. I think it's just a wonderful program. It's a great way to separate your business and your personal expenses. It's a great program for tracking the mileage. It's also great for maximizing your Schedule C deductions and any quarterly estimated taxes. You can calculate them and know where you're at. So that's the big thing with what you're doing here. You want to know what you have to owe the government. I'm going to come into invoices and show you how easy it is to make an invoice. And what's great about this is it's part of that system where you can send an electronic invoice and somebody can pay you. Now, obviously, my yoga business isn't a business for that particular use, so I don't use it, but I'll show you how easy it is to do. So you can come over here and make your invoice, and I could just put in here, you know, yoga classes. So maybe I wanted to bill a studio for my yoga classes and I had a flat rate for them. I could actually create an invoice over here and I could just say flat rate, and it's, you know, $40 a class if I'm going to teach it. And I could make this invoice right here for the customer. I can put my customer up here, you know, Pelican Nest or something like that, and maybe that's the studio that I teach at, or Pelican Yoga. You know, just something like that. And then put the email in and email this invoice. And if I set up these payments, and it's just a click here, it's very simple, then the customer— then the system will just have me fill some information out to prove who I am, get my setup in place, and then I can email this, and then the customer can pay me online. And then it will track the whole transaction through here, and you can start to really use this to really get going in your system and get it automated so that you— if you have a business that you sell stuff and you want to track it, maybe you sell the same thing over and over again, or you just sell a lot of the similar things and you bill out, it's got invoicing in it. So you just really can't beat this program for the purpose that it's designed for. So that's really the overview of QuickBooks Online Self-Employed. I'll put some links into the blog post so you can take a look at it. There's also some other things up here. You know, you can complete your tax profile. So I can come in here and just complete where I'm at, you know, how I file. Even though I'm married, I file single, zero, but I can put in here that I'm married and, you know, filing jointly, yes, and I can fill these things out because this is going to help it figure out the calculations, right? So you can go in here and put your income in, how many dependents you have, you put your spouse's name in here. So it's all in here so you can really start to fine-tune Healthcare, maybe you can get some deductions here. You can come in here and just answer the questions. If you have a health savings account, you can answer the question over here, and that's just going to help it do the calculations. So it's basically what that is, but that's all this program is. But it's relatively inexpensive. It's like $10 a month right now. You sign up with them. I'll put a link in there if you want to sign up. It's, um, they give you a teaser rate of $5 a month for the first 3 months, so you, you get that benefit so you can check it out, see if you like it. You can get it pretty inexpensive price if you want to bundle it with TurboTax. So you're just starting out on this venture, and at the end of the year you're going to do your own taxes. So those are the things that are here in the system. It's it's a pretty neat little program. So I hope that kind of explains QuickBooks Online Self-Employed. If you're unsure, reach out to me. I'll try to help you figure out which QuickBooks product would be best for you. And of course, you can always reach me on my website. And I'll put that in the links as well. So thank you for watching. Bye now. Bye.