Originally Posted by Christophina:
I posted this in the taxes forum but didn't get a response. So please forgive my x-posting.
So I started daycare this year. I started purchasing things and paying for training back in July. My first child started on August 30th. My question is: In minute menu kids, when do I start recording expenses like rent and power? August? July? Also, when is my technical start date? And for my time/space %, can I count all the time from before my first kid started? And finally, I didn't realize until too late that I needed to keep track of every minute of every week that I worked outside of daycare hours, can I just guesstimate or do I have to have concrete proof of everything? Sorry for all the questions, I am just so confused!!
You can not start recording house expenses (garbage, utilities, rent, etc) until after you have a child in care. You can't count July because you didn't have children in your care. You can count your expense for training if your doors were open for business. Your start date is when you started interviewing potential clients. It was probably in August sometime. If your doors were open for business and you started interviewing in early August, then you count those hours for interviews/phone calls too. You can only count the time in your time/space percent that you conducted inhouse interviews. Do you have contracted hours? You should have your current clients at least sign a paper stating what hours (or close to) for when they have their child in your care. You can also use a ad as proof for your advertising open hours. It just doesn't hurt though to ask the parents to say "My child Johnny was here Mon-Fri from 8 am to 4 pm". You can estimate the hours you used to clean and prep. Most people spent half hour before and after daycare hours to clean and organize so you can easily end up work 50 hours on a 40 hour work week. You should just grab a calendar though and start recording what you do though as future proof. You can probably remember the last few weeks so I would start where you can remember. Just write down what times you cleaned including what you did. You can count phone conversations and emails after hours with clients. You just can't double count time. For example: if you have a daycare kid napping, you have those hours counted for since that child is in your care. If they're napping and you take phone calls and send out emails for two hours, you can't add two hours to your count. If you do these things before or after you have daycare hours then you can count that time. If you have any more questions feel free to contact me and I will help to the best of my ability.