Technofriends

If you are a small business in the US and looking out for software to do some petty accounting work for you, Outright might just be the right choice for you. Outright is a simple to use web-service which helps you track your income and expenses, estimate your taxes, and see how your business is doing by means of various reports. 

The opening screen consists of tabs for Income, Expenses, Taxes and Reports. With the Income tab, you can record the payments you’ve received – and keep a running tab on your yearly profit. If you use Freshbooks for Invoices, Outright can import your invoices and payments from Freshbooks. With the Expenses tab, you can manage all your expenses. Outright also integrates with Shoeboxed, so if you use Shoeboxed, you can import your bills and receipts from Shoeboxed. If you pay contractors and freelances throughout the year, Outright can help remind you about sending them 1099s. Taxes tab helps you estimate taxes and also reminds you about the due dates for the taxes. However, when it comes to taxes, Outright has this to say

Because every person’s tax situation is different, we cannot provide an estimated tax calculation that is guaranteed to be accurate. Instead, we provide a conservative guidance based on the following:

• We calculate your businesses profit through the end of the IRS quarter (or through today’s date if the quarter hasn’t ended.) For example, if you were to look at the taxes page on June 10, you would see profit – or loss – through May 31, which is the end of the second quarter for IRS purposes.

• We then calculate the self employment tax (which consists of social security and medicare contributions) using the latest IRS rates.

• To the self-employment tax, we add your business income tax. For this, we simply use the marginal tax rate based on the profit to date. For businesses earning higher income, this may result in a higher tax payment than using the average rate, but we figure it’s better to be safe than sorry.

If you would like to know how to accurately calculate estimated taxes, simply view the IRS estimated tax worksheet.

Interesting reports allow you to view profit and loss – by month, by quarter or by year. Reports also shows you the list of contractors or freelancers whom you must send 1099s.

Overall, Outright is Free to use, simple web service. My wishlist to Outright include features like adding manually created invoices and support for more countries ( especially from a Tax estimation perspective).

Outright is right for you if you are still using Microsoft Excel and Word and the traditional “pencil & paper” for your accounting and bookkeeping needs.

Also Read: Track and visualize your expenses with ‘Expense Organizer’

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