I'am self employed, but had a period of a 1 month where I had no work and had to sign on. Do I treat these payments as business or personal payments and how do I record them?

BTW, great program, I will be buying this at the end of the trial period! :-)

Hi Terry,

Glad to hear you like our software!

Your job-seekers allowance is considered a personal expense - you should record these payments in your Solar Accounts business file.

Regards,

Thanks for the quick reply, I don't want to appear stupid, but how exactly do I record the payments, am I correct in saying that I don't have to pay tax on these payments. The payments were made into my bank account and if I enter the payment as I do with any other payment won't that go into my profit?

Also....how do I record my fuel receipts/mileage allowance?

Hi Terry,

Sorry my mistake - I should have said that generally you should NOT record these payments in Solar Accounts. However, an exception is if you have received these payments into your business bank account. In this case record a Money Received transaction from the 'Owners Drawings and Personal Use' account to the 'Cheque Account'. In this way the payments will not affect your business profit. I'm not sure whether you will need to pay personal income tax on this income - you will need to ask HMRC about this.

For mileage allowance record a Money Paid Out transaction from the 'Owners Drawings and Personal Use' account to the 'Motor Expenses' account. You will need to manually calculate the amount based on the mileage figure.

Regards

Thanks very much :-)