Do you track your expenses? How?

Do you mean in a business sense of for a personal budget?

The business as an accountant to handle the financial side of things, they will take care of the income and expenditure and flag up any possible overspending on a month by month basis. As long as the bottom figure stays in the black your ok.

On a personal level, I have two bank accounts, one for saving and one for bills and everyday living. Once the bills are paid, I transfer half of what's left into the savings, the other half I then have left to spend. It's a pretty basic method I admit but it works for me.

 

Excel for me, its perfectly suited for my relatively small-scale expenses. Relying on intuition could be extremely hazardous if you fail to take just one thing into account. Keeping your expenses as low as possible is one of my main tenets of business. Admittedly I have a fairly small business with a limited income, so outlay has far more of an impact on my business. If you have a business large enough to be able to have expenses that are fully tax-deductable then you can afford greater expenses. I use excel for my tax returns, it has a number of high-level functions that many people do not use. If you find it insufficient for your needs, it may just be that you're not fully aware of all it can do.

 

Well I've give you the way I do it on a personal level, no spreadsheets or databases or anything like that, just simple banking and money management. Once all the bills have been paid, and the savings for the month put away, I don't really need to make a list of the things I've bought.

For a business, as @Steve Dawson says, I'd imagine that Excel would be the software that 99% of businesses would use.

 

The way I budget my personal expenses is to divide my income into household expenses, savings, payment for cars etc., leisure money and everything else. I save 20% of my income for accidents, emergencies and investments. I take 5% of it and maybe splurge on something. For everything else there are groceries, transportation and rent that I have to think about. I usually just track everything in my head or in a journal. Keeping note of things really helps.

 

I do track my expenses, but I don't really use Excel for it. I just sort of try to list down my current purchases, and if I have managed to fit them in my budget. I am a bit stringent when it comes to money so I need to make sure I haven't wasted a hundred bucks on unimportant things.

 

For a business, personally I think it needs to be left up to the accountant to worry about that side I'd the business. It's his speciality and what you pay him good money for.

There's no point in employing an accountant if your going to ignore his advice and do it yourself own way anyway.