As your office is now in your home, it’s very important to set clearly defined boundaries to keep your business separate from your personal life.

Instead of having bulky items (like wedding bouquets and flower arrangements) on display, photograph them and put them in an album, then store those items elsewhere.

The biggest challenge with running a small business is organizing receipts for tax purposes. Here’s a simple, low maintenance solution:

The Small Business Expense File

Required Elements:

• 7 durable accordion file folders with 12 pockets each.
  
• A hard plastic portable file container that fits 7 accordion files – preferably with a clear plastic lid.
  

Instructions:

• Label the spine of your first accordion file folder “Business Expenses” and date it according to your current fiscal year.
  
• Label each of the 12 pockets inside the accordion file folder according to the months of your fiscal year.
  
• File receipts for all paid, eligible business expenses by month (for a home office, you will need to include your home hydro and telephone bills).
  
• At the end of your fiscal year, simply present the accordion file to your accountant. When your accountant is done, you’ll get your file back. Archive it in your portable file container box, but this time place it at the back of the box and bring forward and label next year’s file.
  
• After seven years simply recycle your first file-folder as you no longer need to keep its contents accessible.
  
• It couldn’t be easier, and now, armed with your “Small Business Expense File”, you’ll never have that worry at the back of your mind “What if I’m audited?”

This tip is from episode 4, Click to view the Episode Summary