Enter each item, or summary entries?

So if you have a lot of transactions each month, you may want to consider whether you need to enter each item separately or if you want to do some summary entries. Obviously summary entries would be easier on your fingers. However, if you need to go back to search for information, then you may not want to enter all of your info as summary entries. A summary entry would be for instance, you add up all the expenses for gas on your debit card and instead of entering each debit in your accounting software you enter a total as one check or journal entry. Let’s say you also paid for gas several times by cash. You could add up all the cash receipts for gas for the month and enter those as a summary entry. Remember for gas you can also track miles instead of actual (see previous post), but I am using this as an example. The same could be done for business meals. Let’s say you have a construction company and you buy breakfast for your workers in the mornings. You could enter a summary entry for those purchases instead of entering each receipt for breakfast sandwiches at McDonald’s. Your bank statement would still serve as a detail back up.

Next, why enter each item?

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What’s the best way to enter my expenses?

Alright, now that we’ve discussed the major expense categories, we should discuss the various ways you can track them. As I have mentioned previously, if you don’t have a lot of expenses, let’s say 25 or less for the year, you can probably just do a spreadsheet. However if you have a regular business that has a regular amount of receipts, what is the best way to track these?

My advice is to go thru your monthly business bank statement, which as I advised previously you should have opened a separate business account for your business and not run it thru your personal account. If you also are using a credit card for your business, you also want to try to keep a clean card that is only used for the business. You can then use that as a record for data entry.

There are several bookkeeping programs out there, and the one I use is Quickbooks so I will discuss that one. The other programs out there are similar.

I have also used DacEasy which is a program I also like, and of course there are others such as Peachtree.

Next, enter each item, or do summary entries?

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