It's Thursday at 10 am. You know what time it is, It's Coffee Chats with Candice! So grab your cup of coffee or a beverage of your choice, you know, I'm not judging, and let's chat about the receipts and your January To-Do’s that you need to get ready for tax season.

Normally, I would be in a full-on year in tax mode. But I'll admit, it's been on my back burner and I've been trying to get to it. But I have some other tasks that are just a little bit more priority right now. So we're gonna talk about some of the receipts that you need to be gathering for your accountant. This is where organization helps in the beginning. If you need help with organizing your files, let me know I've come up with a new filing system for our company and I love it so far. I'm just looking forward to improving that. So I would love to share that with you as well. 

As far as receipts, you want to get your telephone statements. That would be all your statements from January to December, make sure that you have that for your accountant. Do you track your mileage? if you haven't been tracking your mileage, that's something you want to do. Anything that you're doing for your business, traveling to the office supplies, traveling to networking, etc, you want to track all that. If you don't have a mileage tracker, we have one in our store. 

So, telephone, mileage, gas receipts, I would go ahead and hold on to your gas receipts. We don't do mileage anymore because we do gas, and because mileage is not it's not helpful for us, but you can't do both.

Did you happen to sell any retail? Did you make something? Did you have any products that you sold? You need to make sure and have your sales tax report that you filed, whether it be monthly, quarterly, or annual, that needs to go to your accountant as well.

Have you received your W-2 or any 1099? Those need to go. Did you work in a co-working space? Or did you work out of your home? If you work out of your home, you will need your utility bills, and possibly your mortgage statements for your home so that you can use your home office as a deduction. It's been 24 years since I've used my home as a deduction. If taxes have changed with regards to all that it changes all the time every year. And so I don't know if it's still necessary, but most likely, you will also need the size of the room that you're working in as well.

Did you attend any conferences, either local or out of town? That would include your meals, your rental car, your flights, your hotel, etc. If you do “tips” you should mark there your tips because some receipts don't always have a place for “tips” whenever you get them, so you just need to handwrite them there.

Remember, and again, those are just some of the receipts that you need to gather. The other thing that your accountant would appreciate is if you had everything organized in date, and order. I mean, if you were organized, if it's organized, you will appear to your accountant like with celestial angels singing, and you know that slow-mo video of your hair blowing and the glow behind you? So, see I've got the pillow behind me over here, so they're okay. Anyway, that's the image that they're gonna have in their head. If you have to upload it to a portal, then just imagine that your accountant is having that visual of you, whenever you you show up in the singing and all that.

Next are bank statements and credit card statements. If you didn't know already, because I've said that I can't tell you how many times you need to have a separate bank account for your personal and your business don't mix the money. And it's so much easier to track when you have them separate because then you know every transaction that's coming out of your business account is for your business, and you're not making any personal transactions out of your business or you should not be okay. If you haven't been already, you need to download your monthly statements and your banking statements, because your accountant is going to need those for your return.

I'll also be looking for your statements for any purchases that you may have missed as far as when you are gathering your receipts. If you find a match between your receipt and your bank statement, just make a little mark on there and know that it's counted for and then you can see what you need to look for. You would treat your credit card statements the same, you want to make sure that you've downloaded January through December 2023. Same thing for your banking statements. If you purchased something on your credit card in December, so if you purchased something last month on your credit card, but you're not paying for it until January so this month or even further out, then that is not a 2023 tax deduction it is 2024 – so the same would be the case if you purchase something last December on your credit card and you didn't pay until 2023. So, you would need to download the December bank statement from 2023

Listen, the more organized you can be for your accountant, the better. Remember your receipts, if you have it on your receipt tracker, which I have, I'm going to show you that hold on just a second. I have it right here. So, I'm going to pop this up so you can see it. Okay, so this is our Expense Tracker. And what I did was just make a few little entries. So these are expenses for my new small business, and I've got the date, the amount, the description of what I purchased, and whether was it paid with cash or card because that makes a difference. If you pay for stuff with cash, which is often the case, especially in the beginning, you need to make sure and account for that because it won't be obvious to you if you have cash because you won't have it in your bank statement. Anyway, this is our bank statement, it totals up your amount for your expenses, there's a notes section over here if you need it. 

And then the other thing you can do is you can use this for a project, not just for the year. But you can also use it for a project that you're doing and you can track what it costs you to do that project. The receipt tracker, when you're going over your bank statement, anything that you might have missed so you don't end up saying something like, “Hmm, I don't know what that was for.” Or “I didn't buy that. That wasn't me.” Because I say that a lot, too. I'm like, “Oh my gosh, I did not buy that. I did not do that. I did not buy that.” I will send you the link if you send me a DM and I will send you a link to our free new updated Business Checklist to help get you started.

So, thank you so much for taking time out of your day and for staying here with me with this crazy morning of things that go wrong. I mean, I do this all the time. I don't understand why I have a list. I write it all down and I'm like, Oh, check, check, check. And then there's always one thing. It happens. So anyway, I hope you have a fabulous Thursday and a fabulous weekend. Enjoy your coffee shop and enjoy mine. And I will see you next week. Same time. Same place for coffee chats with Candice