There are many layers of depth to what it means to be “on it” when it comes to your business books, but there’s one thing that’s SO easy to do that will go a long way to set yourself up for ease when you get around to getting a solid system set up and getting it right…

That one thing is to have a separate bank account for your business income & expenses.

If you’re currently less than “on it” with your business books, don’t complicate this one thing.

It doesn’t matter if it’s technically a business account with your bank.
It doesn’t matter if you have an official business entity to connect it with.
It doesn’t matter if you have EIN, or a business license, or business name.

For this one thing, all that matters is that it’s SEPARATE from your personal money.

This is important for 2 reasons that your future self will thank you for:

1️⃣ If heaven forbid you ever get audited, it will look really bad to the IRS if you have to show them bank statements with both personal and business activity on them. And you don’t want to look bad to the IRS if you want to be on their good side. (You want to be on their good side.)

2️⃣ When the time comes to play catchup and categorize your YTD (year to date) activity to get current with your super sleek automated bookkeeping system (more to come on this later), you DO NOT want to have to sort through every transaction to figure out what is business.

I’ve helped many clients through the catchup game to get current, and the thing that is the most tedious and unnecessary that slows the whole process down is first having to separate everything one line at a time.

If you don’t already have 2 separate checking accounts for personal and business money, open a 2nd one. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.

And before you go to swipe or spend, ask yourself the quick question: “Is this personal or is this business?”

​Then use the correct account.