I am self-employed (homebased, very tiny, maybe 15 transactions a month).
Different places in our life require a different accounting.
For examples:
-Some accept a portion of rent as a legitimate expense, some do not. Some accept internet as a legitimate expense, some do not.
-Some require an annual income/expense report; some require monthly; some require one per last six months.
I currently use YNAB for my personal ins/outs, and only annual bookkeeping for the business (I know this is far from ideal).
I realized this evening that if I were to track the business ins/outs daily or weekly, it would be no problem to generate a report for each. I don't feel able to take on more tracking (inputting), so am considering the following:
1. Ditch YNAB for personal (things are in an excellent place there), and start using it for business instead. OR,
2. Use Mint for business, allowing it to download transactions for me. OR,
3. Other??
Considerations:
1. My bank will not guarantee the safety of any funds to which downloading software is connected. (It says that connecting these violates the terms of my agreement with the bank, and that when it's used I forfeit guarantees of safety, yadda yadda.)
2. Many of my business expenses are shared with personal. i.e., Canada Revenue Agency allows a homebased business to claim a portion of rent/mortgage/shelter, a portion of car expenses, a portion of internet, etc. Because they are primarily for home, I have always had them as personal accounts, simply attributing a minor portion to the business at tax time. For those transactions to download from a business account, I would need to pay them (rent, car fuel, etc) from there. Is that a permitted accounting practice?
3. Again, each program counts different things as a legitimate business expense, so ideally the accounting program would allow me to create a profile for each agency, "tell" the program which items to include in each profile's reports, and let me generate a report with one click of a button per agency. Does this exist?