Two Apps Every Blogger Must Have (That Will Save You Money and Sanity)

We just finished doing our taxes for the year.
I really miss the days of when it took about 10 minutes to do (you know, back when I was in college.)
I was pretty thrilled to find out that not only had I saved an extra $10,000 for taxes that I didn’t need to pay, but we got over $1000 back in a refund.
Thankfully, I have a dad for an accountant, so it made life a little bit easier (you can read some of tax tips for bloggers he shared awhile back). But I’m pretty relieved to be done.
As we were doing our taxes, I realized I needed to be a little bit better about keeping track of certain things. While I have a great income tracker (which you can find at the end of the tax tips post), I wasn’t so good about keeping track of mileage, or of all my receipts. I kept all my receipts, but they were scattered around the house. With mileage, I kept track of our big trips for conferences, but not for all the little drives to the store for posts, blogger events, etc.
And those miles add up.
Fortunately, I found two apps recently that I think will make taxes MUCH easier next year, so I thought I’d share them with all of you. I’m all about doing things that make life easier, especially when it comes to blogging. These will make things a bit easier!
MileIQ
I actually downloaded this app last year, but then the free version was limited, so I ended up deleting it. I just didn’t want to pay the extra money.
I wish I had, because it probably would have saved me more than the $59 I had to spend to buy it! When we went to do our taxes and my dad brought up mileage, we both felt that I was missing out on a lot of extra miles because I hadn’t kept better track. So, I decided to get the “pro” version of MileIQ, and I’m so glad I did.
Now every time I get in the car, it automatically detects that we are driving. After we are done driving, you can go into the app and classify the drive as either business or personal, put notes with it, etc.
You can go online to the MileIQ website, login to your account, and see a dashboard with all your information, as well as the option to download a monthly or yearly report. Being able to do this will make doing your taxes so much easier – just hand your tax accountant your yearly report! Just make sure you put notes so you remember why a trip was classified as business. Here’s a screenshot of the dashboard:
My dad highly recommended I do something like this, and so far, I’m glad I did. The yearly membership is $59, but if you use this link, you can get 20%! This isn’t sponsored by them or anything. I just feel it is making my life easier!
OneReceipt
When you are self-employed and making as many purchases as we do throughout the year, it’s crucial to keep track of your receipts.
My dad always has had a box where he neatly keeps his receipts throughout the year. I’m not as organized as that, and my receipts are in the car, a folder in our basement, in my cell phone case (yes, weird.) For awhile I tried to take pictures of them on my phone, but even then, they got so disorganized!
I saw an advertisement on Facebook for an app called OneReceipt. It intrigued me, so I downloaded it. That was a great impulse download. It’s free, and it makes it really easy to keep track of your receipts. Whenever I buy anything, I take a picture of it in the app, and then I can add notes, the location, and if it was a personal or business expense. You can also sync it with your email address, and it will pull any receipts that come to your email into the app. I love it, and my receipt situation is more under control. In addition, it tells you tracking and return details for products you purchased!
I know these apps won’t help make your page views grow, but I believe they can help save you time and money in the long run. If you want to be a serious blogger, you need to know how to run a business. And taxes are definitely part of running a business!
Let me know about any apps you can’t live without!
affiliate links are used in this post.