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I currently use AceMoney to track my spending, but, it gets a bit tedious. I like to track everything coming in, and going out. I'm self-employed, I have an "account" for every client, and another "account" for every employee, where I track all my incomings/outgoings. I also have a "cash" account, and a "bank" account. When i take money out from the bank via the ATM, I transfer between the two.

I don't use credit cards, I generally pay cash for everything, or use my debit card (rarely). I manually input all my expenditure daily (from my receipts). I don't import in any statements from my bank (bank doesn't allow exporting of data, I don't want to switch banks, I generally pay for everything in cash after taking out a set amount from the ATM).

Am I doing it wrong? Is there a better way?

Thanks!

2 Answers2

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Systems to research that may help you out:

  • Less Accounting
  • Wave Accounting
  • Quicken
  • Quickbooks
  • Mint

Less Accounting and Wave are great because they can import data from banks / credit cards. I know you said your bank doesn't export it but it seems like something as a small business you would want.

Ryan Doom
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Honing in on your last question: Is there a better way?

I think there is, but it would require you to change the way you handle your spending, and that may not be of interest to you.

Right now you have a lot of manual work, keeping track of expenditures and then entering the, every day. The great thing about switching to a habit where you pay for everything using a debit or credit card is that you can skip the manual entry by importing your transactions from your bank. You mention that your bank doesn't allow for exporting. There's still a chance that your bank can connect with a solution like Wave Accounting (http://www.waveaccouting.com), which is free and made for small business accounting. (Full disclosure: I represent Wave.)

If your current bank doesn't permit export or connections with Wave, it may be worth switching to a different bank. It's a bit of a pain to make the switch, I know, but you really will save a massive amount of time and effort over the course of the year, as well as minimize the risk of human error, compared to entering your receipts on a daily basis.

In Wave, you can still enter all of your cash receipts manually if you want to continue with your current practice of cash payments.

One important thing to mention, too: If you're looking for a better way of doing things, make sure it includes proper backup. There would be nothing worse than entering all that data onto a spreadsheet and then something happening to your computer and you lose it all. Wave Accounting is backed up hourly and uses bank-level security to keep your information safe.

One last thing: as I mention above, Wave Accounting is free. So if it is a good match for your small business accounting needs, it will also be a nice fit for your wallet.