Keeping the books when the business is one person
This site covers the bookkeeping a freelancer actually has to do — invoicing clients, logging expenses, separating business money from personal, and putting tax aside as you go — along with the tools built for exactly that: FreshBooks, Wave, QuickBooks Solopreneur, Hurdlr and the rest.
Nothing is published here yet. This is the top sheet of a new pad: the lines below set out what is going to be written, so you can see whether it is worth coming back for. Each piece is filed here as it is finished.
Bookkeeping apps built for one person
What FreshBooks, Wave, QuickBooks Solopreneur and Hurdlr each assume about how a freelancer works — and who that leaves out.
Invoicing, deposits and getting paid
Terms, late fees, retainers and the paperwork that follows a client who pays slowly.
Expenses, receipts and the mileage log
What is worth logging by hand, what should capture itself, and what a deduction has to be able to show.
Quarterly estimated tax
Setting money aside across the year instead of meeting the number in April.
Free ledger against paid plan
Where a free tool stops being enough for a freelance business, and what the upgrade actually buys.
Keeping business and personal money apart
The account, the card and the habits that stop a year-end reconciliation turning into forensics.
Terms printed on this pad
Worth setting down before there is anything to read, because it is what the writing will be held to.
No scores and no leaderboards
Nothing here is given a number out of ten or a place on a board. Where one tool is preferred over another, it is said in words with the reason attached.
Testing is claimed only where it happened
Each write-up says what it is based on. A claim of hands-on use appears only where there was hands-on use.
Affiliate links are disclosed
Some links earn a commission if you sign up through them. That never decides the order anything appears in, and it is stated on the page it applies to.
Prices move, so prices carry a date
Vendor plans change without notice. Any figure quoted here will carry the date it was checked, and the vendor’s own pricing page stays the authority.
How the pad is meant to be used
Three movements, the same as any carbonless book: write it down, tear off the sheet you need, keep the copy.
Write the job on the top sheet
Start from the bookkeeping you actually do each month — raising invoices, filing receipts, the quarterly set-aside — rather than from a brand name.
Tear off the one sheet you need
Each write-up covers a single job end to end, so you can take one and leave the rest of the pad alone.
File the copy, not the verdict
The reasoning is the part worth keeping. When the work changes, the trade-offs are what you re-read.