Book keeping/receipt management

antilles

Hi, I'm letting out a property shortly and am looking to set up a simple book keeping spreadsheet and perhaps use some kind of app to manage receipts digitally.


Just wondered if anyone had any recommendations or could link me to a simple booking spreadsheet I could start with?


I've been playing around in Excel and searching the forum and internet but not sure where to start - there are so many options. Basically just looking for something simple so I can track everything easily.

Thanks

spadoosh

In all honesty the best approach for what your describing will be going old school and just putting it in a book with the receipts kept in a plastic pocket (ideally attached to the book).

Go for a double entry cash book, income one side, expenses t'other.

icebergx

For free receipt management, I've tried Wave Receipts... It has a built-in OCR that converts details from the receipt into text, which might be helpful for you... It is a little slow to process them, though.

00ec25

for a single property which is being let the number of transactions you will be dealing with is trivial and well within the scope of simply doing it yourself on your own spreadsheet.

digital management of receipts would then simply be retaining a scanned copy saved as a file with, for example, a file name that cross references to your spsheet, eg: receipt #1

technical solutions to simple businesses just lead to unnecessary complexity and technical let downs. Keep it simple.

an adequate spsheet would be :
column for bank "ins"
column for bank "outs"
(the total of those 2 obviously being the bank balance)

- column called rent received
- columns for however many expense categories you want (keep it simple, your tax return does not require a breakdown until your get up to tens of thousands of £ of income) so for example: agency fees, repairs, council tax, "other expenditure"

basic double entry then applies:
a) each bank out is a - but the expenditure column recording what that payment relates to is a +. Net total for the row £0
b) each bank in is a + but the rent received column is a -. Again the row nets to £0

For your accounts purposes it is the total of each column which give your total income and total expenditure and therefore your profit which you need for your tax return.

if you can "play" with a spsheet, then you are more than capable of setting that up yourself. You don't need more than that for a single let


sign up for the HMRC training courses for LL so you learn what you need to know:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/courses/syob3/new_letting/HTML/new_letting_menu.html?utm_source=Auto-SA-New-Landlord&utm_campaign=hmrc-let-property-sept-15&utm_medium=URL&utm_content=educational