boring question - how do you keep track of self employed expenses?

[vivariumvivariumsvivaria]

I'm recently self employed and not been making much any money so my shambolic "receipts in a shoe box" approach to book keeping has been sufficient.

I think, though, that this year I'll have to pay tax! Am genuinely delighted with myself, but starting to get in a muddle with my chaotic system.

Anyone got any recommendations for apps or systems that I could use to keep track of things? I have zero accounting experience and find spreadsheets scary. So, something designed for idiots would be ideal.

I use wave apps. It’s an online accounting website that’s simple to use

I have a Coconut bank account which tracks expenses and income and gives you a tax report (you have to manually add in things like share of household bills).

Xero. You can scan your receipts to it. And set it for your bank transactions to import automatically.

Like a pp I use Wave.

i used quickbooks self-employed

Quickbooks. There's a version for self employed and I have it both on pc and an app for my phone. Synchronises with my bank account and can photograph receipts and issue invoices from my phone. It's brilliant and has made my life much easier.

When I was self employed I had a separate bank account/debit card and one credit card automatically paid off in full each month. So nothing was ever paid for that did not come from the 'work' account for my work, and nothing privately was charged to my 'work' account.
So then it's a simple matter of reconciling the accounts to get the right answer!

My DP created a database for my accounts. Come the end of year it's easy peasy, all figures ready to declare.