It's a Team's Life

Preparing for the end of the world Whoops year

As the end of the year approaches I stock up on printer paper and ink as I know I will be running a lot of reports to be filed away with my taxes. January 1st will find me down in my office printing and looking at the statistics of our business for the year of 2015. Pulling together numbers and finalizing the year's work and income. It is fascinating to see the results for a years worth of work, how much did we make, how much did we earn per mile, how much did it cost us per mile to run, and one of my favorites is how much weight did we carry for the year. Oh how I like sharing that weight number with my flat bed friends.

On the first of each month throughout the year I have a list of what all I have to reconcile, print, file away, and get a copy of our logs to electronically file on my computers hard drive. At the end of the year all of the reports are placed in a clear box labeled with the tax year so I can find a document easily if needed. I have shelves dedicated to tax boxes in our basement.

Each time we go home I take in my traveling file cabinet inside and file away our receipts in file folders. All fuel receipt together, maintenance together and so on... At the end of the year I will have each months receipts stapled together, in the labeled file folder, which will then be placed in the end of the years tax box.

We use our pickup for most of the business errands and I keep a small notebook in the pickup to record the date, where we went, and then the mileage. I take the pages for the year out of the notebook and record the miles the pickup was used for business. These pages will also go in the file box.

I get as much done as I can before we leave after the first of the year and then we plan on being back in February as I will then have all of our 1099's and other bank documents. These are copied and everything I need is gathered together and sent off to our accountant by the middle of February.

I will label new file folders for 2016 using a labeler that our daughters got me for Christmas several years ago. In the computer I start new spreadsheets for loads, fuel, and to record our days away from home.

While I enjoy ending the year and learning all of those figures I also enjoy starting my new spreadsheets like a clean slate. It is exciting to wonder what the New Year will bring and I look forward to filling the columns of the spreadsheets once again.