 Day 80: Being unorganized is like being in a fog. |
So, last week I was working on my taxes and feeling like I was in a dark fog since the records I kept weren’t as accurate as I would have liked. What I’m really referring to is my lack of receipts – especially those I know I had, like the cost to get the Auto Barn Wagon cleaned after the east coast road trip. I remember stocking that one away, but alas, it wasn’t in my stack last week, along with plenty of others. How freaking annoying is that?
Because of the major headache involved in keeping track of all my income and expenses now that I’m working freelance, I started searching for a good online bookkeeping program, but the majority of them came out to at least $10 a month or $100 a year. Uhm… yeah, I’m cheap and also convinced that some sort of open-source program will be out there to suffice.
Then, I thought, what about a program that helps you organize your receipts in a digital manner? At least that would help me keep tabs on those silly pieces of paper that mean so much to me at the end of the year. I remembered hearing about Shoeboxed.com, a site that will keep records of your digitally uploaded receipts, and even pull data off them that you can later export. The only problem is it requires a monthly payment, and I am too poor to deal with that.
I searched and searched and searched until finally, I found it. Xpenser, a free expense accounting program that you can update via the web, by voice, by text, by email and by Twitter. What really got me was being able to attach a digital photo (taken with my camera phone) of the receipt to the updated expense, meaning I will have a backup copy online forever to go back to in the future. UHM… AWESOME!?!
And, I realized after playing around, that I can also put income in there. So, if I get payed by BootsnAll for writing on WhyGo Australia, I can put a positive amount into the ledger and tag it as income. Xpenser is actually a FREE, basic (that’s all I need) bookkeeping program with quite a bit of functionality. It will even convert foreign currency to your base currency for when you’re doing business (or just traveling) abroad.
You can also export the data into a spreadsheet or other bookkeeping programs.
I can’t get over how awesome this little program is, so I wanted to share it with you all who might also need a good, cheap way to track your finances on the road.
Take the tour, give it a whirl, and let me know how you like it.
I haven’t put any of my expenses into excel yet for 2010 and I’m not looking forward to it. I saw a really beautiful management system but, yeah, $10/month isn’t something I want to spend. I’d rather pay $50 for a desktop program or something.
Since you probably don’t make enough to have to pay extra taxes to the U.S. you don’t have to worry about quarterly self-employment taxes do you? I’m always rushing to the post office to get those in on time.
Great advice! I haven’t heard of it but looks really handy! Definitely going to bookmark it for later use
This is an example of a time that I’m glad that I make less than $15k/year. At this point, I get so little back in the form of a refund that it’s just not worth it to me to write off some of the little stuff that I don’t have record of. It’s cheaper, time wise, for me to just take the hit, and due to my low income, the hit is only a couple bucks.
Just what I am looking for! Woohoo!
Hi Brooke,
Awesome writeup. It is a great app. If you have an iPod/iPhone/iPad, you can download a free app called Fresh Expense from the App Store that we wrote to work with Xpenser.com. We use it for business travel, personal travel and day-to-day expense tracking. Thanks.
Good tip. Unfortunately, I am Apple-less and can’t partake in the app. But, hopefully someone else can use it! thanks for stopping by