...And the Horse You Rode In On!

Lately, I got a nastygram from the IRS about some undeclared income from 2008. It turns out that while kent4str and I have been splitting all calling income & expenses 50/50, two clubs with which we do the majority of our business have been submitting the annual 1099 forms allocating all income exclusively to me. They'd like $550 by July 14, please.

After doing some research, we've learned it isn't feasible to resubmit corrected 1099 forms so I'm going to send the IRS the $550, then refile each of our income taxes to reallocate 100% of the income and expenses to me to claim back the vast majority of that $550. It's a pain the butt but no more than that. Oh, and we'll go through this performance for 2009 too. *sigh*

From this point forward, I'll ensure all of our invoices are explicitly submitted in either Kent's name or mine, and insist that all checks are made to either him or me, not jointly. Yup, it's more work for the club treasurers, but it'll ensure the 1099 forms are filed correctly.

I've been using QuickBooks to manage our square dance calling expenses, income, invoices and such. It's an old 2005 version but our needs are so light-weight that we don't need any of the features which Intuit turns off once the software has aged 3 years (email invoicing, payroll, etc.).

Of late, I've noticed that this software is the only reason I power up my old desktop computer these days. I bought it about 10 years ago, back when a 1.2GHz box with 512MB of RAM was still a pretty speedy machine. Over the years, I've upgraded the RAM, the hard drive and the USB ports as well as replaced the motherboard once. The creaking old box is showing its age though: my netbook is more powerful than the desktop clunker.

Since I have to do some work with our accounting records, I decided it was time to update our version of QuickBooks and by installing it on my netbook, I could finally let go of the desktop behemoth.

I bought QuickBooks Simple Start 2010 on eBay for $30. It's a stripped down QuickBooks but enough for my needs. It arrived in the mail today.

Installation took some time, largely because Intuit software packages have a software bloat issue that make MS Office seem positively lightweight & fluffy. Once it was installed, I fed it the license code and product number. It then ordered me to telephone Intuit for the activation code.

Which Intuit then refused to give me. It appears the eBay vendor isn't an authorized reseller so I'm out of luck. I sent an email to the seller who immediately refunded my payment.

In the interim, I've located my original QuickBooks 2005 CD-ROM and attempted to install it on my netbook. Alas, the installation process has hard-coded the installation of Flash 7 and Internet Explorer 6, both of which are a spectacularly bad idea so it seems I'm out of luck on this one as well.

My choices now seem limited to purchasing a wildly overpriced current QuickBooks package from some authorized vendor or switching to a cheaper accounting package. Bugger.

...And the Horse You Rode In On!

Lately, I got a nastygram from the IRS about some undeclared income from 2008. It turns out that while kent4str and I have been splitting all calling income & expenses 50/50, two clubs with which we do the majority of our business have been submitting the annual 1099 forms allocating all income exclusively to me. They'd like $550 by July 14, please.

After doing some research, we've learned it isn't feasible to resubmit corrected 1099 forms so I'm going to send the IRS the $550, then refile each of our income taxes to reallocate 100% of the income and expenses to me to claim back the vast majority of that $550. It's a pain the butt but no more than that. Oh, and we'll go through this performance for 2009 too. *sigh*

From this point forward, I'll ensure all of our invoices are explicitly submitted in either Kent's name or mine, and insist that all checks are made to either him or me, not jointly. Yup, it's more work for the club treasurers, but it'll ensure the 1099 forms are filed correctly.

I've been using QuickBooks to manage our square dance calling expenses, income, invoices and such. It's an old 2005 version but our needs are so light-weight that we don't need any of the features which Intuit turns off once the software has aged 3 years (email invoicing, payroll, etc.).

Of late, I've noticed that this software is the only reason I power up my old desktop computer these days. I bought it about 10 years ago, back when a 1.2GHz box with 512MB of RAM was still a pretty speedy machine. Over the years, I've upgraded the RAM, the hard drive and the USB ports as well as replaced the motherboard once. The creaking old box is showing its age though: my netbook is more powerful than the desktop clunker.

Since I have to do some work with our accounting records, I decided it was time to update our version of QuickBooks and by installing it on my netbook, I could finally let go of the desktop behemoth.

I bought QuickBooks Simple Start 2010 on eBay for $30. It's a stripped down QuickBooks but enough for my needs. It arrived in the mail today.

Installation took some time, largely because Intuit software packages have a software bloat issue that make MS Office seem positively lightweight & fluffy. Once it was installed, I fed it the license code and product number. It then ordered me to telephone Intuit for the activation code.

Which Intuit then refused to give me. It appears the eBay vendor isn't an authorized reseller so I'm out of luck. I sent an email to the seller who immediately refunded my payment.

In the interim, I've located my original QuickBooks 2005 CD-ROM and attempted to install it on my netbook. Alas, the installation process has hard-coded the installation of Flash 7 and Internet Explorer 6, both of which are a spectacularly bad idea so it seems I'm out of luck on this one as well.

My choices now seem limited to purchasing a wildly overpriced current QuickBooks package from some authorized vendor or switching to a cheaper accounting package. Bugger.