The IRS - Making a Check and Listing It Twice

[MineralMan]

9. My bookkeeping method follows the shoebox strategy.

Well, except for the Excel spreadsheet and the detailed invoices for every sale shipped by mail. Those went into the shoebox.

I've always kept my small businesses small and simple. I suppose I could have handed the auditor the box of invoices (and receipts for sales made in my office), but he instantly recognized that there was nothing to be gained by his going through that stuff. The spreadsheet was all he needed to see.

I used to have a small shareware software company, as well, again operating strictly by mail and online. It ran the same way, and generated about the same small income each year. More of a hobby than a business, although it generated about $30k in profits a year for a few years. But, there was nothing complicated about it. I did everything myself, from writing the code and printing manuals to copying disks and shipping off the products. Every transaction had a paper invoice generated by another piece of my own software. So, the records were always available, but there were few enough transactions that it was easy to deal with at the end of the year.

I'd hate to have a more complicated business, frankly. I just don't have the patience for it.

Now, I'm semi-retired. I have one client, who pays me a retainer each month plus a per-project flat fee we agree on. So, I have on 1099 to deal with and pretty much zero business expenses. Makes for very simple tax returns.