How to Spend 10 Minutes a Week Recording Expenses and Never Stress Again!

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Stress-free is the name of the bookkeeping game. If you’re our tax client, then you’re already familiar with our prescription for easy bookkeeping. If you’re not our client yet, you’re in for a treat!

10 minutes invested weekly will leave you with almost nothing to do at tax time. The best part – you can use our prescription to record expenses during commercial breaks while watching your favourite show. Monday night Bachelor viewings just got a whole lot more productive. 

Spend 5 minutes recording basic expenses

What qualifies as an expense? 

First and foremost let’s get on the same page. An expense (AKA deduction) reduces your taxes and saves you money. What qualifies? Spending required to run your business (that’s reasonable in the circumstances). 

If you’ve downloaded our free professional bookkeeping tool, the Healthy Wealth Tracker, then you know what qualifies. If you’re not as familiar, here are some common expenses holistic practitioners come across on a regular basis: 

  • Professional and licensing fees

  • Accounting and legal fees

  • Clinic supplies

  • Website and advertising fees

  • Meals and entertainment

If you’re combing through your expenses and feel like you’ve missed some, make sure you check out our post devoted to all the lucrative deductions you may have overlooked. 

How do I record them?

As you go about your week, keep receipts from all expenses together in your wallet, purse or car. While you’re watching The Bachelor on Monday evening (or any day you choose), pull your receipts out and order them chronologically. Input each one into your Healthy Wealth Tracker. If the business purpose might not be immediately relevant, the Tracker has a space for you to indicate this. 

What do I do with the receipts? 

After inputting expenses into the Tracker, snap a pic of each receipt and save the pics in a secure place on your computer. Name each receipt with a short descriptive title like “2019-09-30-Needles.” This will make your life SO much easier if you ever have to dig up a receipt in the future, and you’ll save space by recycling the original. 

While you can get rid of most receipts, if you purchase something of higher value that you plan to use over a number of years, like a laptop for example, be sure to save the original receipt!  

Spend 2.5 minutes recording home office expenses

How do I qualify for a home office?

Having a home office means you can reap the rewards of all the expenses that come with it. Did you know you don’t have to treat patients at your home to qualify for a home office? You qualify if home is your principal place of business administration – meaning if you do that majority of your bookkeeping, website updating, social media planning, emailing and more – you qualify. 

Things like rent, mortgage interest, utilities, insurance and maintenance are all eligible home office expenses.

How do I record them?

Our Healthy Wealth Tracker makes recording expenses as easy as [vegan, grain free, refined sugar free] pie. Once a week, simply input home office expenses in the exact same way as explained above, but in the Home Office tab rather than the general Expenses tab. 

Spend 2.5 minutes recording vehicle expenses

What counts as business travel? 

Travel from your home to your clinic(s) is generally considered a personal expense. However, qualifying for a home office is a total game changer. Why? Travel from your home office to your clinic(s) is considered business travel since you’re now travelling from place of business to place of business. 

How do I record them? 

Once a week, simply input vehicle expenses in the exact same way as explained above, but in the Mileage tab rather than the general Expenses tab. Things like gas, maintenance and repairs, insurance and drivers license renewal fees are all eligible vehicle expenses. 

While you’re recording vehicle expenses, it’s a great time to also record your mileage for the week. To record this, start by pulling up Google Maps on your computer. Then open your calendar and check where you’ve travelled to each day. For each trip, enter your start and end location into Google Maps to determine the distance, and then record the trip in the Mileage tab of the Healthy Wealth Tracker. A lot of your trips will become repetitive (i.e. going from home office to clinic), so you’ll be able to simply copy and paste the distance for each day without opening up the map.

And there you have it! A couple commercial breaks a week and you’re on track for a stress-free tax season, while reaping the financial rewards of claiming all those expenses!