Organizing Expenses/Income/Personal Finance Documents (Paperless Office)
"If you're curious, here are my goals behind this silly madness You said it... The last two words, I mean...:-) If you're auditing your statements - why do you need to keep the info after the audit? You got the statement for last month, you verified that the Starbucks charge that appears there is the same as in your receipts - why keeping them further? Done, no $10 dripping, throw them away. Why do you need to keep your refrigerator owner's manual? What for? You don't know how to operate a refrigerator? You don't know who the manufacturer is to look it up online in case you do need later? Read it once, mark the maintenance details in your calendar (like: TODO: Change the water filter in 3 months), that's it. Done. Throw it away (to the paper recycle bin). You need the receipt as a proof of purchase for warranty? Make a ""warranty"" folder and put all of them there, why in expenses? You don't buy a refrigerator every months. That's it, this way you've eliminated the need to keep monthly expenses folders. Either throw stuff away after the audit or keep it filed where you really need it. You only need a folder for two months at most (last and current), not for 12 months in each of the previous 4 years." I'm trying to organize my financial papers as well.  I have a Fujitsu ScanSnap and it's tearing through my papers like a hot knife through butter (i.e. awesome). Here's how I'm addressing organizing the paper. I'm organizing mine a little bit organically.  Here are the main parts: So anyway, all that to say that it's not necessary to organize the files to the hilt.  If you want to, that's fine too, but it's a tradeoff:  up-front organization for possibly some time savings later.  The search function available is decreasing the advantage of organizing your files carefully.  If throwing all of your files in a digital pile makes your skin crawl, then I won't force you otherwise, but I'm not worried about it for the time being. What you're doing with the other tracking sounds fine to me.  Others may have different insights there. If it was me, I would organize something along these lines.  in large part because down the road when it comes time to purge stuff like small receipts, utility bills etc, you'll be doing it per year, at the 7 year point or something similar. Year first Under that major categories such as Mortgage, Utilities, Credit, Major Purchases, Home Improvement, Other I'd do a monthly breakdown for Other since it's likely to have a lot of little stuff, and bulking it up by month helps to organize it.  But I'd not bother with that for the other items, since there's going to be limited items in each one. If you are scanning stuff on a regular basis, and using a decent naming convention for the receipts, then you could easily sort by date, or name, within any of the larger categories to see for example, all the electric bills. in order. You might also want to look at a cloud service such as DOXO as an alternative to storing this stuff at home (they also work with a number of companies to do electronic billing etc)  In terms of retention, if you are a homeowner, save anything related to your mortgage and anything that goes towards the house, even little maintenance stuff, and any improvements, as all of that goes against the cost basis of the house when you sell.  Generally, after 7 years, you are unlikely to need anything in the way of small receipts, utility bills, etc.   in any case, be sure you have regular backups offsite, either by storing stuff in the cloud such as doxo, or via a regular backup service such as carbonite.  you don't want to lose all your records to a house fire, natural disaster, or having your computer stolen etc.
Our Finance organization does much of their reporting out of Excel being fed out of SSAS cubes, and beyond that, there's significant need for PowerPivot charts, forecasting, and Monte Carlo simulation, as well as significant use of various plugins and VBA code.  We kept Office 365 ProPlus around for Finance and HR.  For the rest of the organization, they don't need particularly advanced capabilities for slides, drawing, or word processing, or light spreadsheet capability and we're quite content to output to PDF, Google Sheets, and other things as needed, as well as using cost free alternatives to MS Exchange/Outlook, Visio, and Project.  The collaboration is a particular plus, and Google Hangouts is really convenient working from multiple sites/screen sharing.  We've done our best to keep our data centralized and universally accessible, in lieu of living in Excel spreadsheets and MS Access databases as tribal knowledge. "A tax return is a document you sign and file with the government to self-report your tax obligations. A tax refund is the payment you receive from the government if your payments into the tax system exceeded your obligations.  As others have mentioned, if an extra $2K in income generated $5K in taxes, chances are your return was prepared incorrectly. The selection of an appropriate entity type for your business depends a lot on what you expect to see over the next several years in terms of income and expenses, and the extent to which you want or need to pay for fringe benefits or make pretax retirement contributions from your business income. There are four basic flavors of entity which are available to you: Sole proprietorship. This is the simplest option in terms of tax reporting and paperwork required for ongoing operations. Your net (gross minus expenses) income is added to your wage income and you'll pay tax on the total. If your wage income is less than approximately $100K, you'll also owe self-employment tax of approximately 15% in addition to income tax on your business income. If your business runs at a loss, you can deduct the loss from your other income in calculating your taxable income, though you won't be able to run at a loss indefinitely. You are liable for all of the debts and obligations of the business to the extent of all of your personal assets. Partnership. You will need at least two participants (humans or entities) to form a partnership. Individual items of income and expense are identified on a partnership tax return, and each partner's proportionate share is then reported on the individual partners' tax returns. General partners (who actively participate in the business) also must pay self-employment tax on their earnings below approximately $100K. Each general partner is responsible for all of the debts and obligations of the business to the extent of their personal assets. A general partnership can be created informally or with an oral agreement although that's not a good idea. Corporation. Business entities can be taxed as ""S"" or ""C"" corporations. Either way, the corporation is created by filing articles of incorporation with a state government (doesn't have to be the state where you live) and corporations are typically required to file yearly entity statements with the state where they were formed as well as all states where they do business. Shareholders are only liable for the debts and obligations of the corporation to the extent of their investment in the corporation. An ""S"" corporation files an information-only return similar to a partnership which reports items of income and expense, but those items are actually taken into account on the individual tax returns of the shareholders. If an ""S"" corporation runs at a loss, the losses are deductible against the shareholders' other income.  A ""C"" corporation files a tax return more similar to an individual's. A C corporation calculates and pays its own tax at the corporate level. Payments from the C corporation to individuals are typically taxable as wages (from a tax point of view, it's the same as having a second job) or as dividends, depending on how and why the payments are made. (If they're in exchange for effort and work, they're probably wages - if they're payments of business profits to the business owners, they're probably dividends.) If a C corporation runs at a loss, the loss is not deductible against the shareholders' other income.  Fringe benefits such as health insurance for business owners are not deductible as business expenses on the business returns for S corps, partnerships, or sole proprietorships. C corporations can deduct expenses for providing fringe benefits.  LLCs don't have a predefined tax treatment - the members or managers of the LLC choose, when the LLC is formed, if they would like to be taxed as a partnership, an S corporation, or as a C corporation. If an LLC is owned by a single person, it can be considered a ""disregarded entity"" and treated for tax purposes as a sole proprietorship. This option is not available if the LLC has multiple owners.  The asset protection provided by the use of an entity depends quite a bit on the source of the claim. If a creditor/plaintiff has a claim based on a contract signed on behalf of the entity, then they likely will not be able to ""pierce the veil"" and collect the entity's debts from the individual owners. On the other hand, if a creditor/plaintiff has a claim based on negligence or another tort-like action (such as sexual harassment), then it's very likely that the individual(s) involved will also be sued as individuals, which takes away a lot of the effectiveness of the purported asset protection. The entity-based asset protection is also often unavailable even for contract claims because sophisticated creditors (like banks and landlords) will often insist the the business owners sign a personal guarantee putting their own assets at risk in the event that the business fails to honor its obligations.  There's no particular type of entity which will allow you to entirely avoid tax. Most tax planning revolves around characterizing income and expense items in the most favorable ways possible, or around controlling the timing of the appearance of those items on the tax return." The IRS Guidance pertaining to the subject.  In general the best I can say is your business expense may be deductible.  But it depends on the circumstances and what it is you want to deduct. Travel Taxpayers who travel away from home on business may deduct related   expenses, including the cost of reaching their destination, the cost   of lodging and meals and other ordinary and necessary expenses.   Taxpayers are considered “traveling away from home” if their duties   require them to be away from home substantially longer than an   ordinary day’s work and they need to sleep or rest to meet the demands   of their work. The actual cost of meals and incidental expenses may be   deducted or the taxpayer may use a standard meal allowance and reduced   record keeping requirements. Regardless of the method used, meal   deductions are generally limited to 50 percent as stated earlier.    Only actual costs for lodging may be claimed as an expense and   receipts must be kept for documentation. Expenses must be reasonable   and appropriate; deductions for extravagant expenses are not   allowable. More information is available in Publication 463, Travel,   Entertainment, Gift, and Car Expenses. Entertainment Expenses for entertaining clients, customers or employees may be   deducted if they are both ordinary and necessary and meet one of the   following tests: Directly-related test: The main purpose of the entertainment activity is the conduct of business, business was actually conducted   during the activity and the taxpayer had more than a general   expectation of getting income or some other specific business benefit   at some future time.   Associated test: The entertainment was associated with the active conduct of the taxpayer’s trade or business and occurred directly   before or after a substantial business discussion. Publication 463 provides more extensive explanation of these tests as   well as other limitations and requirements for deducting entertainment   expenses. Gifts Taxpayers may deduct some or all of the cost of gifts given in the   course of their trade or business. In general, the deduction is   limited to $25 for gifts given directly or indirectly to any one   person during the tax year. More discussion of the rules and   limitations can be found in Publication 463. If your LLC reimburses you for expenses outside of this guidance it should be treated as Income for tax purposes. Edit for Meal Expenses: Amount of standard meal allowance.   The standard meal allowance is   the federal M&IE rate. For travel in 2010, the rate for most small   localities in the United States is $46 a day. Source IRS P463 Alternately you could reimburse at a per diem rate Because BB is really a decentralized marketing company that supports individual retail stores.   It would be continuing to use typewriters instead of email; while still employing typists.  Xerox had the same problem: they were a copy machine company and the sales workers got paid by each paper copy was made.  They R&amp;D the paperless office PARC (mouse, GUI, laser printer, etc...)  and can't make it work because it conflicts with their core business.   BB would have had to buy back all the franchises. The ONLY thing BB could do was to go out of business. Being new does not allow me yet to vote on your question, but what a good question it is. We share our opinion in separating finances in our very well going mariage. Currently I have found a sort of okay solution in two websites. These are http://www.yunoo.nl and http://www.moneytrackin.com/. You can actually tag spendings with multiple tags.  I don't like the idea that the data is on a remote server, but since I have not found a proper  local software solution, I just naively trust their promise that your data is save. Then again our financial situation is not that special. "I currently use Mint for this, which I see that you have already disqualified but not why you have disqualified it.  Set ""budgets"" for how much you want to spend on what type of expense, and then be sure to assign expenses to a budget as they come in. Mint actually learns what expenses go to each budget and eventually does it automatically." It depends on the structure of your business. Are you a sole proprietor filing Schedule C on your 1040, or an S-corp, or part of a partnership? The treatment of a home office will differ depending on business entity. The balance sheet and income statements are located in the 10-K and 10-Q filings for all publicly traded companies. It will be Item 8.