

Ask HN Sole Proprietors and Freelancers: How do you manage your money? - JBerlinsky

I'm a freelance programmer, and I've got an incredibly cumbersome bookkeeping method:<p>1) Money comes into my business PayPal account or 2Checkout account<p>2) I log in at the end of the day and move money from PayPal to Chase Business Checking (2Checkout does this automatically once a week)<p>3) I log in at the end of every two weeks and move my "salary" (just enough to live on) from Chase Business to my Chase Personal account.<p>Of course, this is a pain in the rear to keep track of, and my calendar is littered with notifications to move money around. Obviously, this is suboptimal. Checking my finances themselves is a little better, since I've got Mint and InDinero at my disposal, but I can't use either to transfer money around.<p>So, HN, how can I streamline this?
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mgkimsal
Step 3 might be the only thing to automate - does your bank offer scheduled
transfers?

I'm not sure there's much more streamlining you can do - it's likely not
really all that much work.

Personally I tend to just deposit all incoming money in to a few accounts,
then periodically (every month or so) move some money to personal for living
expenses. I'm not paying myself a 'salary' as such - it's all 'pass through'
on to my personal tax forms anyway (was sole proprietor, now have an llc for
some work).

The accounting stuff - keeping track of what money comes in and out - clients,
contractors, etc - I'm using outright.com for the bulk of that. I guess I just
don't see it as that much of a pain - certainly not enough to streamline.

Perhaps migrating to a payroll service would be useful to you? You might then
have to worry about having enough in the 'business' account to cover the
payroll, such as it might be.

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patio11
Contact Paypal customer service and tell them you want them to "auto-sweep".
They can do this but they don't make it obvious.

