Help - Worksheet for expenses and Ottawa accountant ???

[DisneyPrincess]

I literally have a year of expenses receipts to put together in a Excel to then do my own Taxes. Its my first year having my ''own business'' I dont really know how to calculate everything. I keep playing around a Excel sheet to then enter all my receipts but... I'm lost. What to declare, how to declare, where to declare :( :(

Anyone has a worksheet they can share with me ????

Anyone know a good accountant in Ottawa that is used to do daycare taxes ??

Thank you so much for your help, I'll owe you !

[Inspired by Reggio]

Can you call the wonderful people here for the accountant referrals ~ they support childcare providers in Ottawa so would surly know a great accountant or two?

http://www.ccprn.com/en/information-for-caregivers/

I use Excel and I have a 'sheet' in my workbook that has columns for the 'date / receipt reason (aka if it was a replacement verses new toy or what the maintaince was for) / total' for tallying each of the following categories:


Food & Kitchen Supplies
Toys & Equipment
Craft Supplies
Field Trips & Outings
Gifts & Seasonal Celebrations
Office Expenses
Advertising & Website
Daycare Maintenance & Repairs
Professional Development
Interest on Line of Credit for Business
Interest on Credit card for business
Banking Fees
Vehicle Expenses
Business Liability Insurance
% Home Owners Insurance
% of annual Mortgage Interest
% of annual Property Tax
% of annual Gas bill total
% of annual Reliance Water heater Bill
% of annual Hydro bill total
Phone - additional services above basic landline to support business

The total column on each 'auto sums for me' and than those tallies than get moved over into Turbo tax when it is time to do the expense portion ~ they have some 'template' lines for all business and than they have lines that say 'other' which I just add the things that are not yet covered?

[playfelt]

If you look on the actual tax package there is a worksheet in there that you have to fill out. So basically you need to put your receipts into the same catagories and add them up to get a total. Do not be concerned if the amount you put under supplies is virtually almost everything as it includes food, toys, household supplies, craft stuff, etc.

[DisneyPrincess]

Ok.. I thought that the at had to seperate all the food, household supplies etc... on the walmart receipts :S if I dont have to do that then great cause that was gonna take forever :(

Awesome ladies thank you so much !

[Inspired by Reggio]

Ok.. I thought that the at had to seperate all the food, household supplies etc... on the walmart receipts :S if I dont have to do that then great cause that was gonna take forever :(

Awesome ladies thank you so much !

Just to clarify YES you need a way to tally what is 'daycare' verses 'personal' from any shared receipts as you cannot include 'personal use' expenses on any receipts as daycare expenses ... so if you go to Walmart and buy somethings that are daycare and some that are personal you would highlight or something on the receipt what was for 'daycare' and only record the 'daycare' totals into your Excel file ... if a receipt is ALL daycare than you can just tally as is.


I am anal and like to know what I spend on both personal and business over the year so I tally my personal stuff as well in a column but that is just me and also acts as a back up to show in an audit ~ see I spent $20,000 total in grocery / cleaning supplies and $12,000 of that was personal use and $8000 was business use.

Also as Playfelt stated the actual paper style tax form only has like 5 preset categories if I remember correctly ~ so if you want to decided was 'supplies' means to you and put everything under the one category you can ~ I have more in my list because my accountants program when I started and the Turbo Tax allows extra lines cause they are computer generated and can 'create' them for you plus I am anal and like to budget out my toys and equipment from my creative art supplies and so forth for my own personal reference ~ but can easy total those back together again into one 'supplies' category for taxes.

Taxes suck for sure so figure out as system that is easiest and works for you ;)

[DisneyPrincess]

Yeah I figured I couldnt deduct my hair dye loll

But any of you buy all the food at once ? I tried at the beginning buying the food separately but it just made no sense as the bag of patatoes for example would rot before I could finish it. So I just buy all my food at once (personnal and daycare) I know there is a ''way'' to figure in percentage how much would per per children ??? or is it the accountant who will know ?

And for gas : do you expense the km you use to go places for daycare (like grocery store, toy store etc) ?? do you calculate by the km (distance from your house to walmart for example) or do you just expense the ultramar receipts for example ??

Thanx again !

[treeholm]

I save all my grocery receipts, and then "charge" $10 per day per child to the business. I believe it was someone on here who gave me that advice. I can't buy groceries just for the daycare, because who needs to have two sets of condiments, spices, potatoes etc. Plus, I eat lunch and snacks with the children too.

[bright sparks]

My accountant tells me it isn't necessairy to have seperate reciepts for daycare food and personal food. It can make it easier to know exactly which is which, but I still get a maximum allowance of $10 per day per child for food that I can claim/right off. I don't have time to shop seperatly and all it would result in would be me claiming more km for seperate grocery store trips, or paying myself for the extra time it takes to do this. Also as someone said for certain items, especially produce, it's just not economical as there will be so much waste.

[BlueRose]

I buy family food and daycare food.

My husband and I each take a cart. His is for the family, mine is for the daycare then we go shopping, each with our own lists. there are times when I go to pick up a few ideas on my own and they all end up on the same receipt, so when I get home I put an "f" beside the family item and "dc" beside the daycare item.

[playfelt]

I do a lot of my stuff on the percentage basis such as cleaning supplies - kids are in house a certain number of hours per week. I do hours because i also have to do an entirely separate tax package for my felt busines and then add the two totals together to get the number to put on page one of the personal tax package and then go from there. It is the prework that always takes way too much time and although I vow to be more organized the next year it is usually only marginally so.

We used to have to separate everything and make up our own summary sheet to submit with our taxes. This was many moons ago... Now there is a standard form in the business tax package to fill out. Go onine and print it out and once you start filling it in taxes aren't as bad as it sounds - if you can add up the 12 gas bills and put the total on the line for gas that is all you have to do. There is a formula to find out the percent of those totals you can claim.

[playfelt]

If the thought of a large excel type spreadsheet seems overwhelming go back to the way we used to have to do things before we had computers. Paper and pen. Take a wad of lined paper and put the catagory at the top of the page. Then go through your receipts and put the items on the correct pages - date (even just month is fine) item, cost - note if you are taking items off say a walmart bill put the item down and then a plus t to mean add taxes to the total later. If the bill is specific like you bought one item on the bill and the taxes are done then record the total as is. Add up the pages at the bottom and then that gives you the totals to work with.

Star with household expenses as that is the easiest. Make pages for heat, hydro, water/sewer, property taxes, the amount of interest paid in your mortgage payments (bank will send you an annual statement usually).

Catagories I think I use are administration - I put things like my membership to CCPRN here.
Advertising if you paid for an ad, bought business cards, bought posterboard to make posters, etc.
Office - computer ink, paper for printing, pens, pencils, lined paper, staples, tape, paperclips, reciept books, binders, page protectors, whatever you buy to help you run your business.
Supplies - toys, crafts, food, cleaning supplies.
Repairs and maintenance - can be things like new batteries for toys, repainting the playroom, shampooing the carpet, replacing something damaged by a daycare child such as pushing the screen out of the door or yanking on a cupboard and breakng the child lock.

CCA which is if you bought big stuff and you just follow the chart in the tax package to figure out what you can claim ie transfer the total from the chart over to the other line.

Vehicle costs if you claim this

Forgetting now what else is on there but that is the basics, Yes it seems overwhelming but once you get started it actually goes not too badly. Start by dividing your receipts by month and then dealing with each pile at a time putting the totals from the bills on the right pages. Groceries can just go into a general pile as there are other ways to figure out the amount to use and there is really no consenses on this one.

[playfelt]

Actually good advice I just thought of if you are in Ottawa - attend one of the tax workshops that CCPRN is offering - usually in Feb-March. It will explain a lot of the process and there is someone from revenue canada there to answer questions - ie get as much done as you can now on your own as far as sorting goes and then go to the workshop.

Also on the CCPRN homepage on the left hand side I think it is there is a link to the start up kit. In that kit will be some tax information about the kind of receipts to save. That might have an actual worksheet in it.

[2angels]

I have a question regarding home insurance. Do you claim the daycare endorsement part as an expense or does the entire insurance amount including the endorsement go under shared expense where you claim based on percentage of use? On my statement, the endorsement is included in my premiums. There's no breakdown of how much is my regular home insurance and how much is daycare endorsement.

[Calgarymom]

Ok now I have a question as well, do I have to do a breakdown of all my family expenses (food, bills etc) or if I have kept all receipts seperate can I just do a daycare one???

[Inspired by Reggio]

.... There's no breakdown of how much is my regular home insurance and how much is daycare endorsement.

I would call and ask them to send you one with the break down ~ your home childcare ryder should appear on its own 'line' with the cost that it incurs beside it.

You can right off 100% of the 'ryder' and a 'shared household expense' portion of the remainder based on your square footage of home used, hours of operation and days per year you work.

[Inspired by Reggio]

Ok now I have a question as well, do I have to do a breakdown of all my family expenses (food, bills etc) or if I have kept all receipts seperate can I just do a daycare one???

If you have managed to keep all your receipts for food and so forth separate than you would just use those for recording your expenses ~ it is advised that you need to keep your 'personal ones' on file as well should you get audited you would need to prove that what you have claimed was not 'shared expenses' by showing what you spent for your family portion.

There are going to be some things you need to do the 'shared expense' equation for unless your daycare is totally self contained and has it's own 'bills' just for that area .... mortgage interest and property tax, hydro, gas, home insurance, water heater or softener if you rent one for example are all shared expenses ~ you can only write off a portion of them dependent on the square footage of your home use, the number of hours you are open, and the days of the year you work.

Typically this works out for most providers to between 20 -40% max .... the higher % you are writing off the more of a red flag it is going to appear to CRA and put you at risk of being audited ... basically it has to be less than 50% because to use that % would mean you are using 100 % of your home for business, are working 365 days a year and are open 12 hours a day in order to come up with 50% shared expenses. Most of us do not use 100% of our home because we are not allowed to count 'closet space and non living space' so it might be 'close' to it but not 100%, and most of us only work a max of 240 days a year because we do not work weekends and take at least two weeks vacation a year and are closed for the 10 stat holidays, and most of us do not work 12 hours a day ... so all of those things 'lower' the % you can write off specific to your business model.