Personal Expenses-- Combined

How do I combine personal & non-business expenses in the same company file?

Goldenseal accounting software makes it easy to track personal and business expenses, either combined or separately. This page describes how to include personal expenses in the same file as your business records.

NOTE-- It is usually better to not mix personal and business expenses in the same file! In fact, in many cases separate books are legally required. Click here for instructions on creating separate personal and business records.

Personal Job Costing

If you use Goldenseal for personal expenses, set up an Overhead account for personal expenses. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Choose Overhead from the Accounts menu.
2. Click the New button.
3. Enter Personal Expenses into the Name field.
4. Hit the Enter key on your keyboard to save the record.

If you want to track personal expenses in more detail, you may also want to set up Project accounts for specific work, and a personal Category System to group and identify your personal expenses.

Marking Personal Expenses and Income

Goldenseal expense and banking transactions include a Non-Business checkbox, that you can use to make any items that are personal, rather than business.

For example, follow these steps to enter the purchase of a personal item:

1. Choose Material Purchases from the Costs menu.
2. Click the New button.
3. Enter the vendor, item purchased and price, the same as you would for a business purchase.
4. Enter your personal overhead account into the Job field.
5. Turn on the Non-Business checkbox. You may need to click the More Info button to see it.
6. Enter the payment method.
7. Hit the Enter key on your keyboard to close and save the purchase.

Viewing Personal or Business Expenses

When you combine business and personal records in a single file, Goldenseal will also combine them in reports, unless you tell it otherwise.

To just view business purchases in a report, follow these steps:

1. Choose Material Purchases from the Costs menu.
2. Choose Find from the Edit menu.
3. Click on the Non-Business checkbox until it is empty (not checked or shaded). You may need to click the More Info button to see it.
4. You can also enter a date range, or other limitations to the records used in the report.
5. Click the Find button.
6. Goldenseal will display just the business purchases.
7. Choose Expenses from the Reports menu, and choose Material Purchases from the submenu.
8. Enter Found Records in the Item Range popup field.
9. Click the Update button to create the report. It will only show the found (business) records.

When you view expenses in the Job Costs window, it will separate personal and business expenses automatically, as long as you entered personal expenses with separate overhead or project accounts.

The Income Tax Report will include non-business items, but it automatically separates them into a different category so it is easy to exclude them from tax calculations.

Click here to return to expense accounting topics.

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