This month has seemed interminable. But I shouldn't complain about the passage of time. I have managed to get a lot done on the work and home fronts. It all started early, of course, with New Year over I was back to work on the 3rd Jan, although the first two weeks were very patchy. But over the third weekend emails came in and the phone rang and I ended up with 11 sessions for the following week.
For the last three years, January has been a really good month for this business. In fact, January to March and September to December appear to be the best seasons. So it was a bit worrying to have two thin weeks to start this year. Phrases like "recession" and "economic cutbacks" echoed round my head. But here we are at the end of January and it's turned out fairly well - a good mix of new and returning clients and some website maintenance work added up to a viable income.
Oh yes....that word "income". Play word association with that and most people would say 'TAX', would they not? I set aside a whole day to completing my return online last week but had it all done in a morning. And I mean all done! Online submissions to HMRC are scary, because you get The Answer straight back...and then it says "Pay Now". But The Answer was tolerable enough for me to pay and still leave something in the business. I felt good about having done it - nothing's certain except death and taxes, someone said. Not much of a choice, is it?
Two things made my tax return easier this year:
- I invested in a three-drawer filing cabinet to celebrate the start of my fourth business year last November, and after spending a morning labelling suspension files and putting all my records into them I now find it much easier to scoot my chair over to the cabinet and pick things out, rather than rummaging through wallet files which I kept in those 'magazine holders'. I should say I spent a painful couple of weeks recovering from single-manhandling the filing cabinet up the stairs....but it was worth it!
- Back in October - when I knew I'd missed the paper return and would have to do it online - I set up running totals for my business expenditure on the spreadsheet where I record all transactions. So when the Evil Day came I would have ready-to-hand the separate totals I'd spent on advertising, office materials, travel etc. etc.
I set these up at the bottom of the sheet. The column headings - 'Supplier', 'Invoice No.' etc. don't apply here!
This is an Excel spreadsheet, by the way.
You use the function SUMIF so that you add the money IF it was for "Travel", for example:
So when it came to filling in detailed allowable expenses this saved me a lot of time.
I'm was so pleased with this idea, that I've set up running totals for each category for my 2011-2012 spreadsheet, so that at any time I can tell myself how much I've spent on advertising or office supplies etc. etc. to date.
Next year's return should be a doddle!
Colin
