I'm a VERY small business, practically just a hobby. This is my second year open and during my sale I only had a couple of handfuls of sales (approximately $60) and very minimal expenses. I didn't actually have books for my first year of doing business. I do business on Etsy and they track all of the movement of money. Come tax time, I just went through Etsy and my bank statements to get all the needed information. Literally everything I did was digital so I didn't even have receipts to keep track of. Not a good practice, I know. I did, at least, have a separate business checking account so that made things nice and easy. This year I decided I wanted to go a more formal route. I looked at a few different bookkeeping programs but I couldn't really figure any of them out. I figured I would still have a a small number of sales and expenses and didn't want to spend all of my time trying to learn a program I might not really need just yet. I wanted to stick with a single entry style so I decided to DIY a very rudimentary excel file since I'm fairly good with excel. It's certainly not everything it could be, but it seems to be meeting my needs. I'm excited to try out the file provided in this course though. 

Last year, because I didn't do anything official, I had to have our CPA help me figure out the categories for everything. He didn't really explain it to me though, he just did it himself. So I still trying to figure all of that out. But thanks to this class I have a better game plan. I can look up the tax forms and last year's taxes to see what categories I'm really working with. 

I definitely plan on continuing to DIY the books though. My business is a (sole prop.) side gig to stay-at-home-motherhood right now and will very likely stay that way. So I don't really foresee a need, or budget, to have someone else do my books for me. 

Moving forward I would just like to have a more official and efficient system. One I can update throughout the year and will have everything all in one place. I think that this class has done a good job of setting me up on the right track for achieving that goal.

One question that I do have is how to split up items that are dual use? I do all of my work at home. My computer, ipad, and phone are all dual use for personal and business. And recently I had to buy a new printer. I bought it on my personal card because I did not have the money in my business account (super super small, remember) and needed it right away. It's a significantly fancier (and therefore much more expensive) printer than I ever would have bought for just personal usage, but will still be used for whatever personal needs may arise in addition to my business use. How would you go about expensing these items? If they're all paid out of my personal account what do you do then?