Students That Freelance

Income, Expenses and Profit

For tax purposes, it is crucial to keep track of the income you bring in. No matter if you are on the cash accounting method or accrual accounting method, Outright has got you covered. It is extremely easy to enter your income.

When you do your taxes, (most) expenses are deducted from your income to give you a profit—of which you are then taxed from. Outright gives you an easy way to keep track of your expenses and what kind of expenses they are, which is great for tax time.

Outright has a great quick-look profit/loss calculator at the top of every page that helps you quickly see how your business is doing. It automatically updates itself when you add new income and expenses, which is something I really take advantage of.

Taxes

Ugh, dreaded taxes. Probably one of my least favorite things about freelancing is doing taxes, and I am sure I am not the only one. Outright has a few great features to help when it comes to taxes, including creating a Schedule C (Profit or Loss From Business), estimating your quarterly taxes, and filling any 1099’s on your part to contractors that you may have hired and paid over $600 during the tax year.

Since I don’t pay quarterly taxes (I know, go ahead and slap me on the hand), that part of Outright I haven’t taken full advantage of, however the feature that I really do appreciate is the estimated taxes. Outright will provide a rough estimate based on your income/profit what your federal tax liability is. As with the profit/loss quick see at the top of the page, in the taxes section of Outright, it will automatically update your tax liability, and if you paid your quarterly taxes, you can enter that into Outright and it will subtract it from your liability.

Another great feature is the fact that it will provide for you a printable Schedule C PDF. This is really great to print off and take with you to get your taxes done, or if you do them yourself, this is a great way to get most of it done for you. Remember those expenses you put in earlier? This is where it ends up, all categorized properly on the Schedule C.

Reports and Export

I love reports. I am a reportaholic. I love seeing reports and looking at how my freelancing is going and Outright hits it dead on when it comes to their reports. They have ways every way from Sunday to generate a report and customize those reports so that you can see exactly what you want to see.

I don’t use the export reports and such function all that much, because I also keep track of everything I put into Outright in an Excel workbook, but the export function could be very handy if you need to print off any reports. The export feature produces nicely formatted CSV files that you can then take to Excel and customize however you want.

The Best Part and the Cherries on Top

The best part of Outright for me is that it is free and simple. Outright is not bloated like other bookkeeping solutions out there, and it is great for those that are just starting their freelancing, or want a simple and cost-effective way to keep track of their business.

Now what I like to call the cherries are the numerous ways to connect to other solutions, such as Shoebox, Freshbooks, eBay, PayPal, and several other apps. This is a great little feature that I haven’t tried out, but I am sure it works just as great as the rest of Outright.

So what are you waiting for?

Don’t take my word for it, Outright has a great tour you can take to see just how awesome and simple it is to use. You can check out the tour here: http://outright.com/product_tour.

Disclaimer: This is not a paid review, nor was I contacted by Outright to do a review of their app. I am a true genuine user of Outright. Any tax or accounting bits of information above is only for your information and should be used as such.

What do you think of Outright? Plan to give it a go?