Create a Sole Trader Invoice for NPOs with Ease

Sole trader invoice for NPOs

hey this is attorney eagles with Potts Weinstein today we're going to talk about how to pay yourself as a sole proprietor so if you own a business and it's just you and you haven't formed an LLC or Corporation or any of that then you automatically have a sole proprietorship you can also file for a DBA or fbn if you want to use a business name that's different than your name but it's still just you the legal aspect of the business is just you so technically paying yourself you could just have all the income go into your personal checking account and then just spend it but that is a terrible idea and it's a terrible idea for a couple of reasons first you need to set aside money to pay income taxes self-employment taxes second you need to set aside money to pay for the expenses of the business you're going to have some expenses that are monthly expenses and some that are just once a quarter or once a year and you didn't make sure money is set aside for that and third you need to track things in your business it's very common for people to have a one-person business and they don't actually know how much money they're making because income comes in you spend it on business stuff you spend it on personal stuff are you actually making a profit how much profit are you actually making what part of your business makes money it may be just a big giant mess and it's very difficult to make business decisions if you don't know how much money you're making and where you're making it so how can you pay yourself as a sole proprietor in a way that's going to be helpful for you and keep you from messing things up so the first thing that I would have you do is open up a separate business checking account as I said that's not legally required but it is going to make so many things easier because then for that business checking account the income goes into that business checking account the expenses go out of that business checking account expenses for the business and then you write a checkered or do a transfer it doesn't have to be check from that business account to pay yourself then you know exactly how much you're paying yourself what the income was coming in what the expenses are coming out because they're there on the bank statement it actually will help simplify things for you so much in the end now you also may want to have a separate PayPal a separate venmo you may want to have a merchant account to accept credit cards like through stripe or Square I know vet for venmo you definitely want to have a separate venmo for your business because your personal venmo is not supposed to be used for business for PayPal you'd also really want a separate PayPal just for your business and these are this is about the terms of service of those companies and less about from a tracking perspective because the money the income from those should be going into your checking account don't ever leave don't ever leave income in venmo or in PayPal because that is not insured like a bank account and they can yank that stuff back it is that is a terrible idea you always want that money to come out on a regular basis you know it depends on how you might often you get paid it could be weekly that you roll it over into your business checking account number two is have a separate credit card for your business it's very common for sole Proprietors to use their personal credit card for their business because they and the business are the same thing but it makes tracking difficult to do so if it is possible either just have one of your credit cards that you just use for the business so there's no personal stuff on there you just use business but it's your own credit card you're personally liable anyway or get a business credit card you might start out with like an AMEX card one of those old school green MX cards that have to be paid off every month but then the expenses go on that credit card and the reason you want to have a credit card for expenses and not just use the debit card for your checking account is because it's better for doing business for paying for things online because the credit card company will advocate for you way more than your debit card will with your bank it's not money that's coming out it's on a credit card so that way you have a bit of a buffer if you need to dispute something and it actually makes it and there's also a lot of places where a credit card where is much more appropriate and works much better than using your checking account number three is to pay yourself on a regular schedule in the beginning you may not be able to pay yourself the same amount every time you pay yourself but you could have a schedule to pay yourself so every week on Friday or every month at the last day of the month or once a quarter I mean there's no right answer for how often you should pay yourself it just is what you're comfortable with and what works for you and your business I've had times in my business where I paid myself every week and the reason was that my business had so much ups and downs it was helpful to make these decisions on a weekly basis for how much I can pay myself okay I see how much money I made last week then I know how much I can pay myself it was better to do it on a weekly basis but I've also had times where I pay my myself twice a month and even at times I pay myself once a month and the there's pluses and minuses for each of them it really depends upon what you're comfortable with but the thing is having a regular schedule is very helpful now maybe this Friday you can't pay yourself anything at all because you made no income in your business there's nothing wrong with that except the fact that it sucks you can't pay yourself but you legally don't have to actually issue yourself a paycheck anyway so the the idea is this is a convention you're coming up with so you look at whether or not you can pay yourself this will also be helpful if you convert your sole proprietorship into a S Corporation either an LLC taxes and S corporation or Corporation taxes in this Corporation for tax purposes to save money on taxes because then you will be doing a formal paycheck and it will be to be on a set schedule the amount doesn't have to always be the same but let's be honest at schedule so it'll try to train you for how that's going to work but then how do you figure out how much to pay yourself okay now let's get into that number four you need to keep some kind of log or spreadsheet or written down on a piece of paper of your regular expenses so you're gonna have some expenses that are every single month that's to host your website for example you're gonna have expenses that are every year like your business insurance might be once a year or twice a year or your domain name for your website you need to figure out when all those expenses are due especially the things that are once a quarter or once a year oh that'd be an expense to pay your insurance is 500 and it's due in April okay versus these other expenses that are every month and then you can calculate what is your overhead maybe you have what you add up all the annual expenses and divide them by 12 and then all the monthly expenses you have 500 a month of stuff of expenses some of which will come out every single month and some of which is kind of like saving for the next time it comes out on an annual basis so you need to know that if you get paid a thousand dollars of income 500 of that is going to your expenses so then the other 500 you can pay yourself see what I'm getting out here now it is in the beginning when you're doing this you also have to look at when those expenses go out so if you're doing this calculation in March and your 500 bill for your insurance is due in April then you need to also set aside money for that because it's not going to be able to build up over the course of the year but the idea is that as you do this over time you're going to realize what your your overhead is to pay for all your expenses and then once you've made enough money in that month to pay for the overhead the rest of it is yours except for number five number five is you need to set aside money for taxes now this is hard because how much taxes you owe I can't tell you how much taxes you because it depends on your personal tax situation you're going to have income tax and you're gonna have self-employment tax self-employment tax replaces all the ficos and Social Securities and stuff like that that come out if you do a paycheck and I right now I don't have a sole proprietorship I have an S corporation so I have to worry about self-employment tax because I have a regular paycheck that does Social Security and bankers and on all that jazz but if you're a sole proprietorship you have to set aside money for income tax and for self-employment tax you might need to do quarterly deposits ahead of time you might be able to do it just at the end of the year it really depends on how much money it is and it also depends do you have other income are you married and your spouse's other income do you have a day job and this is just your side gig hopefully you'll be able to figure out a general percentage of how much of your money you need to set aside for income tax and self-employment tax the self-employment tax rate is 15.3 percent as of the time I'm recording this which could change in the future probably will change in the future income tax depends on how much money you're making right and it's taxed differently based on base each additional chunk of money you're making is taxed at a higher rate so it may be that 20 of your money goes income tax maybe that 40 of your money goes income tax it wildly depends on your rate and what your tax deductions are but the idea is you can figure out over time you can use different calculators that the IRS provides and I can also link to some in the description below to figure out a rule of thumb of how much money you need to set aside and you may need to set aside a third or forty percent something like that into either a completely separate account a savings account that you have attached to your business checking account that is for taxes or you set that aside you just leave it in your account but you note that it's set aside it can be best to transfer it over to a different account it depends on if you're going to have the discipline to not accidentally spend that money right now whether or not you need to do deposits of that on a quarterly basis it depends on how much money you're making how much money you're making in it for everything else in your life and how much taxes you paid last year versus this year I mean it is a complicated thing that I can't answer that applies to everyone but that is some a calculation you'll need to do so hopefully the idea is that if you get paid a certain amount of money you'd say a client pays you a check for a thousand dollars at on the first of the month you'll know okay 500 of this is going to expenses I know the 500 that's left I'm going to take 30 of that and put it into the savings account for my taxes and then the rest of it you pay to yourself and then a client send gives you a check for another thousand dollars later later in the same month you don't need to take five hundred dollars out for expenses you pay yourself a third of it in your income tax savings account and then the other two-thirds you pay yourself that's kind of the idea of how it's going to work for you and this is a calculation you would do every time you want to pay yourself I highly recommend that you keep your business money separate from your personal money because this will be helpful for you to know are you actually making money your business where your business money comes from doing your taxes at the end of the year and then it'll also help be helpful whenever you kind of up level your business to be taxed as an S corporation in the future again this is attorney Elizabeth Potts Weinstein if you have any questions about what we talked about today please feel free to post them in the comments below and I'll try to point you in the right direction thumbs up you found this video helpful subscribe for more videos like this and if you have more questions like to connect further you can join the patreon or sign up for the Discord links are below thanks a lot for watching bye