Filter by Cash Transactions in QuickBooks Self Employed

 How to see all the transactions and receipts you entered manually in QuickBooks Self Employed.

Change the Accounts dropdown menu from your bank or credit card account to Cash.

This will filter transactions and only show ones that did not come in automatically from connected accounts.

Filtering with this method will more easily help you check off receipts and see what's been entered.

TaxAct Jacks Up Their Spring Prices to be Close To TurboTax

I've used TaxAct in previous years and purchased the Premium edition to file my Federal and State Taxes together for just $25.  Even when I filed on April 15th, 2015, I still paid only this amount.

TaxAct has changed their fee structure to charge separate amounts for the Federal Return and the State Return if you don't pre-pay in the winter for their promotional pricing.

I got an unfortunate surprise when starting my 2015 return that the price was going to be a little more than double what I paid last year! $25 to $60.  That's a 140% increase.

This is their fee structure this year if you wait until April to pay to file online:

($35 for the federal return plus $25 fr the state return was $60 total.)



Price Comparison, TaxAct vs. Turbo Tax:

TurboTax Deluxe (Includes Federal and State)
($57.13 for a PC/Mac disc from Amazon)
$60 digital download
(not designed for small business owners)

TurboTax Premiere (includes Federal and State)
"Everything in Deluxe plus specialized guidance for handling your stocks, bonds, mutual funds and employee stock plans"
$77.65 PC/Mac disc version (Amazon)
$89.99 PC digital download
$77.65 Mac download (from Amazon) 

TurboTax Home and Business
$86.54 (any version, digital download or disc) from Amazon.com
*  Generate W-2 and 1099 forms fast-Quickly prepare ready-to-print forms for contractors and employees*
* Extra guidance for new business start-ups-TurboTax walks you through start-up costs that your business can deduct
* Get one-on-one answers to your tax questions by phone from our credentialed CPAs and EAs*. Also includes 5 Free Federal E-Files and one download of a TurboTax State product



Bottom Line:
I'll keep using TaxAct for now, but in the future I won't mind shelling out another $35-40 for the Desktop version of TurboTax, especially because it will save some headaches compared to TaxAct online.

The online version of TaxAct is not very helpful at the very end when it detects a problem with your return.  It does not provide a link to get to the forms or boxes to fix the problem.  On my state return I had to navigate through about 10 pages before I found the single box that TaxAct had flagged as a potential problem.

Good luck with your taxes!

Adding categories in Excel with SUMIF

If you need to get the SUM of only specific items within a column in Excel, the SUMIF function will make things simple.

 

In this spreadsheet example, each specific type of fruit can be totaled separately. 
To total all the apples,  =SUMIF(B2:B8,"apple",C2:C8)
The word apple must be in quotes for the function to work.
To calculate the total bananas and oranges sold, simply change "apple" to "banana" or "orange" in your SUMIF function.  See example images below