Software for expenses and earnings

[Deleted User]

I'm a sole trader and so far have been recording my income and expenses on my home made Excel worksheet.

What formats do accountants use, that you can upload to hmrc directly if needed? Any free software that use this format? So far I am using 1tap on my phone to take pics of receipts.

Thanks!

[Deleted User]

Also - do I need to keep petrol receipts? I probably only use 5% of all my petrol on private work. What receipts do I keep if I have to? Or do I just calculate the cost based on the HMRC website and not submit petrol receipts?

Pennywise

Deleted_User wrote: »

I'm a sole trader and so far have been recording my income and expenses on my home made Excel worksheet.

What formats do accountants use, that you can upload to hmrc directly if needed? Any free software that use this format? So far I am using 1tap on my phone to take pics of receipts.

Thanks!

You don't upload each transaction/invoice to HMRC (yet). All you do is submit totals for each income/expense heading. If HMRC want more detail, they'll ask you for breakdowns of your totals and then if they want evidence, they'll ask for specific invoices they want to see.

Best is for you to look at the tax return (which you'll have to complete) and then work backwards so that you can keep records in the right format, i.e. the relevant income/expenses categories.

badmemory

Pennywise wrote: »

Best is for you to look at the tax return (which you'll have to complete) and then work backwards so that you can keep records in the right format, i.e. the relevant income/expenses categories.

I'd second this. You just need to set up your spreadsheet with the appropriate columns. For filing they don't actually require you to break it down by source unlike on purchases, but I've found it helpful to ensure that any particular expense group is being funded enough by the income for that.

If you are working on a cash basis you may not be able to carry forward a loss.