Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering

How to account for startup costs for an LLC from personal money?
If you are using software like QuickBooks (or even just using spreadsheets or tracking this without software) use two Equity accounts, something like "Capital Contributions" and "Capital Distributions" When you write a personal check to the company, the money goes into the company's checking account and also increases the Capital Contribution account in accordance with double-entry accounting practices. When the company has enough retained earnings to pay you back, you use the Capital Distributions equity account and just write yourself a check. You can also make general journal entries every year to zero out or balance your two capital accounts with Retained Earnings, which (I think) is an automatically generated Equity account in QuickBooks. If this sounds too complex, you could also just use a single "Capital Contributions and Distributions" equity account for your contributions and distributions.