Small Business QuickBooks Expense Categories Advice

Very glad I posted, thank you for your answers.

Unfortunately I told my Ex to not sign anything until we'd discussed it but he did sign an agreement to pay £140 a month for full bookeeping. I then managed to negotiate that down to just three months at £140 each to cover the three months of work needed to produce a self assessment return for Jan-Mar 2017 for the 2016-17 Tax year. This included free training so I could do the bookeeping. Plus £200 for the self assessment. So I guess a bit of a fools agreement. But given the advice he's given so far, wouldn't be confident we wouldn't find ourselves in trouble with HMRC at a later date. he just doesn't seem able to understand our business, perhaps more used to Limited Company accounts, I don't know.

The free training seemed to show he didn't really know how QBs online worked, hadn't set up any of the categories I needed (which we had specified) with him saying that he needed them to have numbers consistent with his company codes (I hope that makes sense) which he didn't supply. I'd have appreciated a list of categories with the code numbers his company used to make life easier if he couldn't input them into our QB himself.

QBs, yes its a bit of a nightmare. Even with advice from QBs and looking at numerous forums been unable to get an essential special field to show up when printing out invoices (shows in QBs not when printed inspite of altering printer settings in QBs). But from replies on here, it looks like we have to be using some sort of accounting software.

I've sent three emails to our accountant without a single reply so it looks like we have to figure it out for ourselves.

I can't figure out, for example, how to enter the vehicles my ex has purchased. Put a vehicle category under tangible assets (know I have to create a subcategory for each vehicle) but how do I actually enter the vehicle into there - through an expenses window?

I do feel I could make a major mistake just through lack of accounting /tax knowledge and how to do things with QBs. And well, an accountant who didn't seem to understand a dog needs feeding so is dog food is an allowable expense (he's obviously essential to the work my ex does)? Then there's my exs food. Tax rules are complicated. He often does 24 hour shifts and has to eat on the job, but is the food he buys allowable (he doesn't buy takeaways we are talking well under the fiver a day allowance)? I just don't know enough and not getting answers I can trust if I get any, from our accountant. But stuck with him because of the agreement. My ex hasn't kept a record of his mileage so does that mean we will have disputes over the fuel costs later on? Accountant doesn't seem to be available to ask.

It wasn't until the training we realised he probably wasn't right for the business. But too late by then.

He does keep records of where he works & for how long very stringently (invoicing his client depends on that). But no records of mileage. Bit strange because he did record mileage when working as an employee. But will be keeping a record of his mileage from now on.

Have been on at him to get things organised for 9 months lol.., he's done pretty well keeping receipts but its obviously a bit of a job entering everything now, 9 months on. But got to be done.

I have booked myself for a Quickbooks Webinar on October 11th. Going to another accountant next week. Badly need tax advice relevant to the business type. Not sure what we'll do about the initial accountant. Might have to just take our losses on that mistake, we'll see. Better than finding the business with an unexpected tax bill but hoping I can just pay him for the unhelpful 2 hour training session.