There are several things you can do to streamline your financials and free your mind to focus on making the grade as a free agent. Jan Zobel, an independent tax specialist, helps free self-employed people and independent contractors from shoeboxes stuffed with receipts and taxing IRS audits. She has these suggestions for managing your money.
Time is money.
File your old appointment book, calendar or daily planner away with your financial information and tax materials. You can use your schedule to clarify and verify receipts and other records of travel mileage, telephone expenses and other business expenditures. During an audit, the IRS challenged one of Zobel's clients, a psychotherapist, on thousands of unlogged business miles-distance traveled as he drove between San Francisco and Palo Alto to visit clients. Every week, his appointment book showed going here to there. The devil is in the details.