Quickbooks...For My Home.

Hi. 

I’m amanda. 

Something I’m able to admit. 

I run my house like a business. 

Sean travels for most of the week (and has for 13+ years). We have 2 kids and a dog. And I thoroughly enjoy working. 

With his travel schedule and my love of working + soaking up the kiddos, I have set our household up more or less like a business. It’s a client of mine. 

For some, that may sound too transactional, but here we are. I do this so that it can run fairly smoothly and I can make time for my business. 

The other day I was having a coffee chat with a friend and she was talking about tracking expenses for their home. I shared that we used Quickbooks Online…for our home.

A light bulb went off. 

They use it for their business but haven’t thought about it for their household. 

So, I went to Instagram to simply share this for anyone else needing a solution and while some use another program a good number wanted to know more….so here we are!

I’ve tried other programs and they just didn’t work for me - either they felt clucky or just had too many extras that distracted me from what I needed…tracking expenses. 

I had originally set up a google sheet and would pull the numbers from our online banking statement. In that Google sheet, I created different categories: utilities (mortgage, city of columbia, etc.), Ellie (crossfit, gymnastics, etc.), Extras (going out to eat, coffee shops, amazon), and so on.

I definitely overdo it on the categories but it helps me really see where our money is going and making sure we’re being as smart as we can. 

While tracking this way worked, it took way longer than I wanted it to and me and tedious tasks = unnecessary grumpiness.

So, I asked our bookkeeper (hey, Lara!) if it would be over the top to set our household up on Quickbooks. “Nope, not at all”

I met with Lara and she set up all our categories. 

Into her office, I went with all my categories and banking information. She helped me set up all my categories and asked…you sure you need all of these? Yup! I’m not giving up “coffee shops” but I do want to have that expense front and center so I keep myself in check (insert me taking a sip of said ice vanilla nut with almond milk and extra ice).

So, all is set up it has sped up our monthly finances check-in so much!

It connects to our bank account so I can open up the app and categorize the expenses that come through. For most of them, I’ve set up a “rule” so it automatically matches them and I just approve them. Example: our mortgage always gets categorized as utilities. 

I do this at least twice a month as we typically have the same expense each month, but when I have a few random minutes I can go in and update it. 

Then at the end of the month/first part of the next month, I go in and pull our profit and loss report. This shows us the total amount spent per category. I then compare that to what we’ve set as our budget. 

One tip from our bookkeeper, sign up with the business account (you just need the basic account) not the personal account.

Another tip that’s not necessarily QB’s related is we have a couple of automatic transfers set up. Each month we automatically move money into a Gifts account and a Vacation account.  Mostly because Christmas comes and it’s like, whoa what’s going on? So, we move money over each month and at Christmas time we know what we’ve saved and use that and it doesn’t feel like we’re dipping into our normal budgeted numbers. 

Have any questions, please reach out as I’m an open (quick) book and happy to share more or answer any questions!