Free, Simple Online Bookkeeping: Outright.com

By energy_linguist, July 16, 2010, Personal Finance, Taxes

So in honor of scouring the interwebs for free personal finance tips, it dawned on me that providing tips to better manage your finances (and yes these are free) is really only scratching that thing we fondly refer to as the surface.

Why not start with free personal finance software? Duh FTW …

So I’ve recently marched into the proverbial copy writing unknown, a.k.a. Freelanceville. I’ve worked as a freelance copywriter off-and-on for over two years now (4 and counting total!) and have worked diligently to get my finances in order now that I’m increasing my workload and swinging for the fences.

Enter Outright.com.

Outright.com is part Quickbooks and part … well awesome to be honest. It’s simple, free online bookkeeping and accounting for small and medium businesses, entrepreneurs., tax professionals and freelancers like me. Imagine if simple bookkeeping software met a non-aviation version of auto pilot.

I’ll let the benefits speak for themselves:

Track – Import and track income from credit or debit cards, Paypal or other invoicing platforms, eBay, receipts for payments received and more. Outright will automatically refresh and import transactions regularly, so you’re always on top of money coming in.
Manage – Track and manage business expenses/deductions and match to preloaded categories that you’ll file during tax season on your Schedule C.
Taxes – Stay on top of estimated tax payments with quarterly reminders.
Contractors – Get help filing and organizing 1099′s for contract workers.
Reporting – Expense, Profit and Loss, Income by Category and more.

My favorite feature by far is the Outright Self-Employed Community, which essentially provides a robust yet easy-to-navigate question and answer portal (couldn’t think of a better term) that allows Outright users to seek tax and personal finance advice from the community at large.

I recently asked about tracking fixed income vs. contract for tax purposes and received two very informative answers. In fact, since Outright caters to bookeepers, CPA’s and the like, you’re getting free tax and financial advice from people who normally charge by the hour.

Now … how fantastic would it be to drop those pesky spreadsheets for good?