This time of year hits differently when you work for yourself (although in full disclosure, I’ve always found tax time stressful). One of the best things I ever did as an adult was to find a good accountant. While I know there is tax software that makes doing taxes on your own a breeze for many people, I am not one of them and prefer to leave working with numbers to the professionals. I’ve been using my current accountant for many years now, and we have a good working relationship, which makes my transition to full-time entrepreneurship easier.
Last week, I began the arduous task of assembling all of my expenses, especially for the last few months of 2022 when I was working for myself, ahead of sitting down with my accountant. Fortunately, for most of the year, I was working full-time, so that made things a little easier. But in getting all of my receipts together, I was reminded of how important it is to be organized and to itemize expenses as you go, something that my business coach Diana Davis covered in Camp Clarity. I spent a full two days going through receipts, saving them in appropriate folders, and trying to remember what things were for, a system that I wholeheartedly do not recommend. Since I was already on a roll and we are just a few months into 2023, I decided to take some extra time to organize my business expenses that I’ve already had for this year.
After sitting down with my accountant, which is always like a crash course in finance 101, I learned a lot more about how I should reconcile things moving forward to make tax time next year easier. We came up with simple ways to track income and expenses monthly and keep her in the loop throughout the year so we’re on top of everything by year-end. And I even got to pass on some of my Diana Davis knowledge to her as she expands her business and figures out what to charge for her services.
The moral of the story is that tax time doesn’t have to be scary or even that time-consuming. For me, I prefer to sit down with my accountant and recap the year, although I know for other people, it might be easier to just send all the receipts over and have their return sent in electronically. But whichever way works for you, I think it’s important as women to charge our worth and to see where our money goes.
P.S. If you need a little humor while you’re assembling your tax filing, here’s a Reel I recently posted that will make you laugh!
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