Contract work - How do you keep track of your expenses?

[jorgemonkey]

The bookkeeper that works at my day job told me that since I work as a contract worker I can deduct expenses that occur when I'm out on the job or going to/from the job. I or course plan on meeting with an accountant to make sure of what can/can't be a tax deduction.

I'm wonder how ya'll keep track of your expenses. I have Quickbooks that I use for invoices & keeping track of sales info, but I'm not sure how to keep track of receipts & all that good stuff.

I'd appreciate any tips

[adina]

Quickbooks should handle all that, and make sure you save your reciepts. I use a business credit card for everything, so it's all entered, and then my accountant gets a quickbooks file in Feb and makes sure everything is good. It divides everything into catagories.

There are specific softwares for photography if you're interested...but I spent $1400 on one last year, and haven't opened it yet. Quickbooks and a spreadsheet are working great so far.

[jorgemonkey]

How do you store your expenses in QB? Do you create a different expense account (Gas, Hotel, Equipment, etc.) Or do you just lump them all into one expense account?

[adina]

They have general accounts, and then I add whatever extra I need.

In the ledger area, I put who I paid, the amount, then the account (travel meals, advertising, telephone, whatever) and then a little note on what it was. I added accounts for lab work, albums, matting/framing, stuff like that. Then, when you go to the reports area, you can pull everything up by how you catagorized it.