Hey y'all! I lost all my info on my CakeBoss program, and it just killed me, so I have been fiddlefarting around, not doing anything with it but now I am ready as I will ever be... But stuck! I was wondering what OTHER CAKEBOSS USERS are doing with it as far as expenses go?

Specifically, I have a receipt from Restaurant Depot it has

Libby's Pumpkin

Eggs, loose 15 dz

Paper Parchment

Bag Poly

Butter salted

Butter Unsalted

Butter Milk

Dome Lids

12" x 12" x6" boxes

8" cake circles

Dawn

So, do you enter it as Restaurant Depot /Supplies/ $138

Or enter each item/specific category and the price?

It certainly doesn't fit under the given categories, since there are cleaning items, paper products, packaging, and ingredients.

Then I have one here from The Cake Store That Shall Not Be Named

2mm pearls

3 mm pearls

4 mm pearls

tylose

primrose cutters

gel color

airbrush color

Merkins candy coating

paramount crystals

6" x 2" fat daddios pan

silicone lace mold

purple Sixlet

luster dust oyster

It doesn't have a category, either.

Walmart:

cream

sponges

ribbon

chocolate chips

10 drawer organizer cart

I am seriously gonna throw up if I have to add all this separately! And then I have a job opening for data entry. DEAD SERIOUS. o_o

My intention is to know what the hell I have here, what it costs, (what the heck I spent all my money on) AND to please the IRS, all from one program. Last year I paid WAY TOO MUCH to have someone do it all for me. This year, I at least want it sorted.

Fiddlefarting, is that in the dictionary? 

I don't use CakeBoss so my bookkeeping may not help... My ledger is set up using categories from the Schedule C. So ingredients, packaging, office supplies, etc each get totaled in different columns. I keep receipts in chronological order so it's easy to track each expense. Easy peasy. But this is where Jason shows up to expound the virtues of Quickbooks...    

AI also kept separate accounts for ingredients, baking supplies, general supplies, etc. This was in QuickBooks but CakeBoss should work similarly. When entering a receipt into expenses I would typically just use one account based on the majority of the purchases on the receipt.

So there's no need to throw up, you should be fine putting all the expenses in one account (as long as they are all business-related of course).

AI was coming to say that I loved that name, Fiddlefarting, and then I find it's just you. Droning on about pumpkin puree and tylose powder. Thank you, thank you verrrrry much.

Fiddlefart is a technical term ;-) I swore I would do better this year... I have a metallic gold gift bag stuffed full of receipts... I hate the paperwork, I just want to make cakes on my own terms and the biggest part is no fun at all! Whah!!!

So, do I separate the items on each receipt? I was due a refund last year, but I happily gave it all to my accountant so I didn't have to deal with the mess... I want it this year!

A

If all the items are deductible it's probably not necessary to separate the items for tax purposes.

If Cake Boss has keyboard shortcuts I highly recommend using them, with QuickBooks each receipt would take about 5 seconds to enter using just the keyboard.

But they don't fit into neat little categories? I swear, i am an office product addict. I go to Kroger to get milk and cream and chocolate chips, and come out with those, plus staples, bulldog clips, tape, glue and foam core board. ALL used in the bakery, exclusively. I was looking at schedule c and it shows all these little categories.

I'm not sure if this is what you mean...But this is what I've done in cake boss.

I created a few new expense categories...So when I was at sams the other day and I bought a wireless printer, powdered sugar, butter, cream cheese, cleaning supplies...I broke down the receipt.

So, say the wireless printer was $120, I entered it as $120 "Office supplies"

Then my ingredients were say $85 I entered it as $85 "Ingredients"

Then the cleaning supplies were $30 I entered it as $30 "cleaning supplies"

In the "Description field" it will read Wireless printer-SAMS, then the cost, the category and the date.

Then what I do is, I have a monthly planner, at the end of each month I take ALL of my receipts for that month and staple them to that month in the planner and put it in my filing cabinet...I HATE tons of file folders, so that is just how I save all the hard copies of the receipts/

A

They do fit into categories, but if you look at how net income is calculated on schedule C (line 31) it just adds up all the expense categories (lines 8 through 27a) and subtracts the total from gross income, which is in turn gross sales - returns - COGS . You should end up with the same result if you enter an entire receipt into one account (whether it is COGS or expense) or if you break it up into multiple accounts.

A significant exception is capital expense (a large expense for an item that will last a long time), capital purchases that cannot be immediately deducted need to be broken out separately so they can be depreciated. There are other exceptions, for example in some cases you can only deduct half the cost of business meals (line 24b).

A

Paperfishies- that is exactly what I meant! Thank you. I wasn't sure if it had to be done like that, or what. Have you Been using it long? Do you do your taxes, or has an accountant "approved" of your method? I want to do it properly, but I don't want to anything more than I have to, lol.

Paperfishies, I do much of what you explained, but I've found that CakeBoss (or any software) is unnecessary. I created a simple table on my laptop with categories and then add expenses. But I would never do as Jason suggests, and fudge categories, regardless of the end result.  

Oh on another note...Last year my accountant told me that for 2013, I should be keeping a mileage log, how many miles each way a delivery is because mileage would offer a larger deduction than the cost of gas expense?  Or at least that is how I understood it.  Anyone know anything about this?

Mileage can result in a huge deduction at the end of the year and helps keep your personal income down. Keep a log book with starting/ending mileage, reason for trip, date, and total number of miles. 

AI will have to make a mileage chart too. Why in the heck doesn't CakeBoss have it? I would love to be able to use it exclusively but there are many times it is just inadequate. It can't be that hard to make it so you can add a title, then a description if necessary. I am disappointed in the software, but I couldn't find anything better. I am not not able to just pick up and make a dang spreadsheet, I want to make cakes!

AIf you have a standard delivery charge per mile, I found it helpful to book delivery charges to a separate income account. So if you charge a flat $1/mile, the number of miles you drove for deliveries is equal to the number of dollars in your delivery charges account.

A

I initially started out carefully dividing up each receipt into the appropriate expense account, but I eventually realized that this wasn't really providing any value. It's possible I'm missing something...could you explain why you wouldn't fudge categories, as long as all the categories are deductible in the same way?

A

We started out charging $1/mile round trip but changed it to $1/minute to take into account SF bay area traffic (in which case this shortcut wouldn't work).

If you only charge $1/mile on the way there, you would double the amount in the delivery charges account to get the number of miles.

A

Fudging is bad when the auditor comes a knockin.

A

It was a cost/benefit decision...there is additional labor cost involved in separating the expenses on a single receipt into accounts that are all added up the same way vs. just including them in the account with the majority of the purchases. An auditor won't care if a few bucks here and there end up in Supplies (line 22) instead of Office expense (line 18), since the IRS treats both expenses categories as equivalent when making the net profit calculation.

Now if accurate financial reporting broken out in detail by expense account is important to you then you need to take the extra time to split expenses, but for many it is probably not necessary to see reports drilled down to that level.

Jason, that is your personal opinion which may or may not be shared by our friends at the IRS.

A

Perhaps, it's just difficult to imagine that this would be an issue during an audit when there is absolutely no impact to net profit. Maybe if the auditor was having a bad day, but worst case scenario would be having to go through your receipts again and reclassing expenses, of course no penalty would be due because it would not impact your tax owed.

There's also the question of how the auditor would even know there was an issue just by looking at your Schedule C, unless you make a massive mistake like classing all your expenses under Depletion (which typically only applies to mining companies).

I am a Conservative, so I am not effing around with my paperwork. The IRS targets us. I am only a few miles from Cincinnati, where all those "low level" employees did all the targeting. Supposedly. 

A

A. The targeting was focused solely on political groups with certain name patterns attempting to gain non-profit status; B. Both liberal and conservative groups were targeted; C. Unless you make it obvious in the name of your business, the IRS does not know what your political affiliation is when you file your tax return.