When managing business transactions from personal accounts, it's crucial to keep accurate records to ensure your financial reports and tax calculations are correct. If you haven't provided these transactions yet, don't worry, it won’t delay your onboarding process. However, until we receive this information, your financial reports and tax calculations might not reflect the true state of your finances.
Here’s what to do during onboarding:
For personal accounts with business transactions: Upload a spreadsheet to your Collective dashboard containing only the business transactions. Make sure to include the transaction date, amount, and description as they appear on your bank's activity page or statements.
Avoid connecting personal accounts to your accounting software: Instead, use the spreadsheet method described to ensure only business transactions are recorded.
If unsure about a transaction: Include it in the spreadsheet, and we can discuss whether it qualifies as a business transaction.
Moving forward, use only business accounts for business transactions: This helps keep your personal and business finances separate, simplifying bookkeeping and compliance.
If you have a personal account that contains business transactions, do not connect it to your Collective dashboard.
Instead, please upload a spreadsheet to your Collective dashboard, that only contains the business transactions from these personal accounts. Make sure to delete the personal transactions, we do not want to see them, and that you are only including business transactions from your Box E date on your form 2553 (your S Corp election date).
If you are unsure if something is a business transaction or personal transaction, please leave it in and we can discuss, or read this article.
Also, don't worry, Its perfectly normal at this stage. Maybe you just opened a business checking with your EIN. Maybe you only had one checking account that you used for both personal and personal transactions before joining Collective.
But as of this moment you need to stop using personal accounts for business transactions.
You can use Option 1, Option 2, or a combination of the two.
Spreadsheet from Template - Most Common Option
If you have less than 25 transactions, or are unable to export data from your bank, or have many different personal accounts with a few business transactions, this method might work best for you
Fill out this spreadsheet.
You can fill out it by typing transactions manually, or copy pasting them directly from the activity screen of your personal bank account, or copy pasting from a pdf bank statement of your personal bank account, or copy pasting then from an export of activity from your personal bank account.
Collect all the business transactions from all the personal accounts and copy paste them onto this spreadsheet.
Upload the completed spreadsheet to your Collective Dashboard.
Your Onboarding Accountant will add them to your bookkeeping and will review the transactions with you and how they flow to your Income Statement.
Spreadsheet Downloaded from Personal Bank
Set the date range to start from the first of the month of your Box E 2553 date.
This appears slightly different on each bank or credit cards website. Some will want you to choose a date range first and then download the activity.
If you have a hard time pulling the csv. file, we can support you during your onboarding call to pull the data.
Once you have the file, delete all lines with personal data. We only want to import business income and expenses. The end sheet should only include business data you want to add.
Business expenses should contain, at least, the following information:
Date
Amount
Description - description from the bank or your own description
Customer/vendor
If you are unsure if something qualifies as a business expense, please leave it and you can review with your OA during your training call.
Upload the completed spreadsheet to your Collective Dashboard.
Repeat this for each personal account that has business transactions
Remember
If you had a previous accounting software you used, we wont be taking over your old account. We will build back your books with raw data from the bank. What Happens to my Old Bookkeeping Software
We only want you to connect business accounts to xero. Click here for instructions to connect business accounts in your accounting dashboard.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this document is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial or tax advice. It is not intended to be a substitute for obtaining accounting or other financial advice from an appropriate financial adviser or for the purpose of avoiding U.S. Federal, state or local tax payments and penalties.