Finance and Business Blog

June 2010 saw the release of Earnings Tracker 7.

In version 7, updates have been made to the reporting sections, default data settings, and a “Log Out” menu option is now included.

It is now possible to generate a list of invoices for a particular client, generate a list of pension contributions, and generate a list of office/desk rental payments.

Monthly pension contributions are now included as “default” data, so they are automatically inserted when a month is added to the spreadsheet.
    
Finally, a “Log Out” menu option has been added. Previously, it was assumed that people would log out by closing the application. This still works, but for completeness, users can now log out properly.

To find out more about Earnings Tracker go to http://www.dixondevelopment.co.uk/earningstracker.htm

Version 6 of Earnings Tracker has just been released (end of March 10).

This latest release contains a few bug fixes and a bit of extra functionality.

When you add/edit a month, you can now enter up to six ‘other revenue’ amounts (previously you could only enter one). Other revenue refers to revenue that is not invoiced. For example, this might be revenue generated by Google AdSense.

More information about version 6 can be found at:

http://www.dixondevelopment.co.uk/features/version6.php

December 2009 sees the release of Earnings Tracker 5.6.1. This is a maintenance release that addresses an issue with some of the reports whereby the months were not always listed in the correct order.

Earnings Tracker - FREE Accounting and Bookkeeping Software Tool for Contractors and Freelancers

Dividend payements can be taken out of company profits after corporation tax has been paid. For example:

Turnover = £100,000
Salaries and other running costs and expenses = £30,000
Net Profit = £70,000 (£100,000 - £30,000)
Corporation Tax = £14,700 (21% of £70,000)
Amount Available for Dividend Payment(s) = £55,300 (£70,000 - £14,700)

To prevent double taxation (where both corporation tax and income tax are charged on the same profits), the dividend received carries a tax credit. This effectively states that the net dividend has been taxed at the basic rate of taxation.

This means you don’t pay any further tax on your income if you are a basic rate tax payer - your taxable income is less than the higher rate tax threshold (about £36,000)

How Much Is The Tax Credit?

The tax credit is 10% of the gross dividend.

The dividend paid to shreholders is the net dividend.

With reference to the above example:

The net dividend payement is £55,300.

Therefore, the gross dividend is £55,300 x 1.111111 = £61,444.44.

Therefore, the tax credit is £6,144.44 (£61,444.44 - £55,300).

If you are a basic rate tax payer, you pay 10% of the gross dividend in tax, which is considered already paid via the tax credit. Therefore, you have no more tax to pay.

If you are a higher rate tax payer, you will be charged tax at the rate of 32.5% of the gross dividend in tax.

For our example, this is 32.5% of £61,444, which equals £19,969.44.

From this figure you need to deduct the tax credit of £6,144.44.

£19,969.44 - $6,144.44 = £13,825.

This equates to 25% of the net dividend of £55,300.

You can use Earnings Tracker to calculate your tax credits and generate dividend tax vouchers.

Businesses often pour huge efforts in reckoning and managing various transactions including, company revenues and expenditures like invoices, salaries, expenses, etc. Any snag in these calculations would ultimately result into misinterpretation of financial results and thereby present a false picture of company’s growth. Hence, a proper handling and analysis of the financial data is highly called for. Well, you can now delegate most of your account handling troubles to Earnings Tracker 4.0. It helps the users in managing different types of transactions including, dividends, salaries, taxes, pensions, etc. Earnings Tracker is extremely easy to use and its features help in easy calculations.

Using Earnings Tracker 4.0, you just need to follow a simple process and store the transactions. To start with it, first you need to register and form an account to work with it. Log-in and you will be prompted to set the static values to carry out further calculations. With the ‘Set Static Values’ you’re required to enter the Gross Monthly Salary, VAT Flat Rate Percentage and Monthly Accountancy Fee, and then press to Update/Confirm Values to get them applied to the records. You can update your profile and start on working further. With the given ‘Add Month’ feature you can select the year, month, and record the money coming in and going out. This includes Amount Invoiced, Income Tax, Expenses, Pension Contribution, Dividend Taken, etc. With the View/Edit Spreadsheet feature first you need to select the columns like Month, Amount Invoiced, VAT Charged, Accountancy Fee, Gross Monthly Salary, Income Tax, Bank Interest, Other Revenue, Expenses Taken, Corporation Tax Due, Maximum Dividend, etc, to be displayed on the spreadsheet and enter the relevant values in it. You can even easily create and edit the dividend tax vouchers.

Earnings Tracker 4.0 application helps you in recording and managing the revenues and expenditures of your business and makes your calculations extremely easy. For its instrumental feature-set, optimal performance and purposeful assistance it offers in carrying out easy calculations, the software is rated with 3.5 points.

http://www.dixondevelopment.co.uk/earningstracker.htm

Now that Earnings Tracker 5.6 has been published, it’s time to start looking forward to the next version of the software.

My intention is to publish the next version in time for Christmas 2009. As yet, I have not decided what features will be included or what the version number will be. At the moment, one of the features I would like to add is the ability to create invoices in the software.

Earnings Tracker - FREE Accounting and Bookkeeping Software Tool for Contractors

Version 5.6 of Earnings Tracker will be released in August 2009.

New features:

• Users can now generate comma separated values (csv) files from reports.
• Bank Interest is now included in the VAT Flat Rate Scheme calculation.
• An option is now available to include ‘other revenue’ in the VAT Flat Rate Scheme calculation.

In April, the HM Customs & Excise stated that bank interest should be included as income for the purpose of the VAT Flat Rate Scheme calculation. Here is an extract:

For this reason, we have decided to update Earnings Tracker and include bank interest in the calculation.

We have also added a check box when adding or editing monthly bookkeeping figures, enabling ‘other revenue’ to be either included in or excluded from the VAT Flat Rate Scheme calculation.

Earnings Tracker - FREE Accounting and Bookkeeping Software Tool for Contractors

The next version of Earnings Tracker will be version 5.6, which hopefully will be released towards the end of the Summer.

We have deliberately held back from putting out a major release until next year (2010). This will enable us to iron out any issues with the current version before introducing new functionality in version 6.0.

Version 5.6 will allow reports to be exported in CSV format, which means they can be edited in a spreadsheet package such as Microsoft Excel. Hopefully this will be a useful addition to the current reporting options available within Earnings Tracker.

Earnings Tracker - FREE Accounting and Bookkeeping Software Tool for Contractors and Freelancers

I noticed the other day that some of the retention rate percentages were incorrect. For one month, the spreadsheet was indicating that I had picked up 104% of the amount I had invoiced, which seemed a bit odd.

I had a quick look through the code and found a simple error in the retention rate calculation, that only appeared when multiple invoice amounts were entered for a particular month.

If you use the retention rate column, and you have months where you have entered multiple invoice amounts, you should open those months for editing (click the month name in the spreadsheet) and then save the changes (click the Update Values button). You don’t have to change anything. This will fix the retention rate percentage for each month you open and save.

This month (March 09) sees the release of version 5.5 of Earnings Tracker, which comes hot on the heels of version 5.1. The reason I decided to put out a new release so quickly is because there was a usability issue with version 5.1 (and earlier) that was starting to bug me, as a user of the software.

Default data
When I first introduced the use of static data, my intention was to simplify the process of adding or editing months within Earnings Tracker. I thought that by putting values such as the VAT rate, corporation tax rate, gross salary, etc on a separate page, it would reduce the clutter on other pages.

Unfortunately, it meant that everytime you added or edited a month, to be on the safe side, you need to check the static values. Otherwise, there was always the possibility that the wrong static values would be used in the monthly calculations. As this caught me out on a few occasions, I guessed that it was probably catching other people out.

In version 5.5, static data has been renamed as default data, and is copied onto the form when you add a month. The default data is also available when you edit a month, based on the values the used when you added the month.

This, I hope, offers an elegant solution to the problem.

Context-sensitive help
With version 5.5, I took the opportunity to add some context-sensitive help at window level. There is now a link in the top right-hand corner of each form that, when clicked, opens a page of help that relates to the form.

Unless there are any bugs that need to be fixed in a hurry, I don’t anticipate putting out another release until next year (2010). I have released three or four versions over the last 12 months and I feel it’s time to leave the product alone for a while.

I think in the next release I will allow the entry of multiple salaries. I’ll also have a look at some other products to see if there are any features I think would be useful to Earnings Tracker.

Earnings Tracker - FREE Accounting and Bookkeeping Sofware Tool for Contractors and Freelancers