QuickBooks Self Employed is designed to help freelancers and sole proprietors keep tabs on income, expenses and tax obligations. Simply swipe left to mark a transaction as business versus personal and categorize it to align with IRS filing categories.

The web and app-based service works well for people with side hustles or those just starting down the self-employment track, but it won’t scale with your business and switching services could prove a hassle. Skip the self-employed version and go straight to QuickBooks Online if you think you’ll outgrow QuickBook Self-Employed’s basic reports and features.

How does QuickBooks Self-Employed work?
QuickBooks Self-Employed is designed for freelancers and contractors, specifically those who don’t have separate business and personal accounts. You may not find value in the service if you use a dedicated business credit card or checking account. But if you're mixing business and pleasure, financially speaking, you’ll appreciate intuitive tools to help you track, sort and categorize transactions.

Once you connect your accounts (checking, credit cards, PayPal, etc.), you can easily see all of your income and expenses in one place. You’ll need to invest some time in organizing those transactions, though, at least at the onset. You can do this one of two ways: Manually assign income and expenses as business or personal and categorize them, or create rules to automate the process.

Beyond tracking and categorizing expenses, you can log mileage and calculate relevant deductions. You can also create, send and track invoices via QuickBooks Self-Employed, though the service allows minimal customization and doesn't support estimates. QuickBooks Self-Employed can also produce the following business reports:
- Mileage log.
- Profit and loss.
- Receipts.
- Tax summary.
- Tax details.

QuickBooks Self-Employed benefits
Swipe left for business
Using the QuickBooks Self-Employed app, quickly mark income and expenses as business or personal with the swipe of your finger. You also can split transactions by percentage or dollar amount, designating a portion as business versus personal.

Had enough with swiping? Set rules to automatically assign and categorize transactions. You can tell QuickBooks that deposits from a specific client should always be marked business income, for example. Or that transactions at Staples should always be designated as business office expenses. Rules can be applied retroactively. You can also mark a specific bank account as “mostly business” to take some of the legwork out of organizing your books.

Set it and forget it mileage deductions
No need to manually calculate mileage deductions for every work-related trip. QuickBooks Self-Employed will automatically do the math for you using the current IRS mileage rate. Just opt into mileage tracking via the app to automatically log all of your car travel, then mark which trips were business-related. QuickBooks keeps a running tally of business miles and the corresponding deduction. You can also manually enter trips using the app or web service.

Some users report issues with missed trips and inaccurate mileage tracking, so keep tabs on your trip log to ensure precise records.

To know more about QuickBooks for Payroll or Nonprofit Accounting in QuickBooks visit Apps4Rent.