Old school shoebox vs. QuickBooks Self-Employed - night and day difference

I used to do the shoebox method for 5 years. Every receipt, every coffee meeting, just tossed in a box and prayed come April. Last year I finally switched to QuickBooks Self-Employed after my accountant threatened to charge me extra for 'puzzle work.' That thing auto sorts my mileage, tracks my meals, and connects to my bank. I spent maybe 3 hours total on taxes this year instead of 3 weekends. The $15 a month stings a little, but it paid for itself in time savings alone. Has anyone else made a similar switch and felt dumb for waiting so long?

3 comments

3 Comments

charlieh7414d ago

Wait, did the auto-mileage tracking actually work right for you, or did you still have to go back and verify a bunch of trips? I've heard mixed things about that feature.

corap6114d ago

Oh yeah, @charlieh74, it actually worked pretty well for me most of the time lol. I did have to go back maybe once every two weeks to correct a few trips where it mixed up a personal stop with a work one. But honestly it saved me way more time than doing it all by hand, so I'd say it's worth it if you just check it once a week.

linda_butler14d ago

The funny thing nobody talks about is how it handles weekend errands differently than weekday commutes lol. Like I noticed mine would correctly log my Tuesday trip to the office but then flag my Saturday run to Home Depot as "personal" and ask if I wanted to remove it. That got annoying until I figured out you can set it to just auto-categorize all trips as work unless you say otherwise. Once I flipped that toggle it stopped second-guessing me so much. But yeah the gas station stops were always a mess cause if I grabbed coffee on the way to a client it would sometimes split it into two trips.