Jim Dettman
jimdettman at verizon.net
Fri Oct 5 09:07:36 CDT 2007
John, <<Would anyone care to comment on what you use to know your financial position.>> I take a pretty simplistic approach to my books. My AR is setup in Access, which gives me an aging. I really don't look at it too much as I bill bi-monthly and my terms are net 15. If I don't see a check, work stops until I get one (actually, I've never had to resort to that yet). Part of the idea behind that is if there is a problem, it surfaces real quick. It also keeps up a nice cash flow. As far as AP, I have so few bills really that it's just simpler to do them by hand. For payroll I have a single spreadsheet to calculate the FICA and record Federal and State taxes owed. Since I deposit monthly for both it's easy to keep on top of those. I also use Access for tracking my expense reports, which I typically don't bother with till year end. At the end of the year, I do an income/expense statement just by looking at my billings and then running through the check book and cc statements to pickup expenses. I also come up with some balance sheet totals, and then send it to the accountant. He takes care of the corporate tax filings. Actually, he's been after me for years to get it all computerized with something, but client work always comes first, so it's something that I just never seem to get around to. Only other thing I need to keep track of is Sales Taxes, but I try to avoid selling any hardware or software directly anymore. What I do is make recommendations, scope out sources, and then turn it over to the client to order it directly. I do pay some use taxes on stuff I buy over the Internet, like my MSDN Universal subscription, which I keep track of on a spreadsheet and remit quarterly. Jim. -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2007 10:51 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: [AccessD] Budget spreadsheet - was RE: consulting fees I have developed a really cool and useful spreadsheet to allow me to track my actual expenses, income, taxes etc. It has so far been a work in progress, leaving last month's sheet locked and copying it to a new sheet for this month, then to new sheets for "out into the future". It allows me to input my actual billing (from the previous month) or projected billing which will be the "income". I have columns for Expense name, Expense amount, "will pay this someday", paid but not cleared and cleared checkboxes (actually little Xs). Putting an x in those columns copies the expense amount over to a "paid but not cleared" and "Paid and cleared" column. The Expense Amount, Billed Not Paid and Billed and Paid columns get summed at the bottom. Thus these three columns show what my expenses are, what expenses have been paid but the money has not been deducted from my account, and bills paid and deducted from my account. I use internet banking and can see my bills clear and my account balance at any given instant in time which I copy into the spreadsheet as I update the Xs that mark bills paid not cleared and paid and cleared. Off to the right side I have a pair of columns to track the bank account, Billing not received, Paid not Cleared etc. Also in the same column I have a small section for tax deductible items - medical insurance, mortgage interest, SEP IRA, FICA (self insurance actually) etc. Way off out of sight I have a section to compute the FICA using the rules for Sole Proprietor. Another area calculates the Progressive tax on the actual (annualized) taxable amount. And finally a section that computes my taxes (roughly) and feeds it back in to the expense column. Doing all of this allows all of my totals to change as I enter any bill over in the left hand "expense amount" column. Also as I change my billing it updates my taxes owed and subtracts all expenses (taxes are fed into the expense column) to give me a "net after expenses" (truly sad). But... The good news is that for the first time EVER I know my financial state given my bills and a billing amount. And it WORKS! I can see what my FICA is so I can save that in a tax account, and what my state and federal taxes will be after legitimate deductions so I can save that in a tax account. In future months I can play with how much I pay to credit cards (I'm paying them off), how much I pay into my various tax deductions such as medical and SEP Ira and have that instantly feed back to tell me how much has to go into the tax account (again, roughly) as my deductions change. Or how much I have to work (bill) to pay all the bills and have X dollars left over. It can be depressing but at least I know where I stand or where I could stand if I worked 20 hours every day. Would anyone care to comment on what you use to know your financial position. John W. Colby Colby Consulting www.ColbyConsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Dettman Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2007 11:43 AM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: Re: [AccessD] consulting fees John, You make an excellent point. There are some other things that do go up as a result as well, like workmen's comp and disability insurance, but those are minor when compared to the government's take<g>. Jim. -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com