Simplified expenses- fuel

Being able to categorise in QuickBooks Self-Employed is our top priority, shamilt1.

Normally, you can offset some of what you've spent against the tax you owe. That is if they're allowable expenses and for the business only. Allowable expenses are any costs needed to run your business. This includes travel expenses such as vehicle insurance and fuel. However, you're unable to claim personal expenses. If an item that's for personal use appears on the same receipt as a business cost, this part of the cost is known as a disallowable expense. You can choose the Business income for the correct category. But, you can also reach out to your accountant if ever you need a second opinion.

On the hand, money transfers between your connected accounts are usually categorised as Transfers. However, you can still ask your accountant's opinion on the correct category to choose.  For more information on categorising transactions, I've added this article for your guide: Categorise Transactions In QuickBooks Self-Employed.

Also, to further guide you in claiming mileage and all other travel expenses in QBSE, I'd recommend checking out these articles:

• About car, van, and travel expenses
• Simplified expenses if you're self-employed

Feel free to let me know if you have other questions about categorising transactions. I'll always be right here to assist you.

Thank you for your reply but it doesn’t really answer my question.

The items I mentioned are not allowed to be offset against the tax I owe, so do all items like these need to be categorised as personal?

I'll help you deal with categorising your transactions in QuickBooks Self-Employed (QBSE), @shamilt1. 

Let me go over and discuss further details about this.

In QBSE, transactions that are categorised as Personal are income that's not part of your self-employed business, income from others who share your bank accounts, and personal transactions and deposits. To know more information about other categories the program has, check out this article: Learn about income and expense categories in QuickBooks Self-Employed.

To ensure you'll be able to record the transactions accurately, I'd highly recommend seeking assistance from your accountant. This is to avoid messing up your books and to ensure that they will be allocated to the correct category.

I've also added a handy article that can help you along the way. It has the instructions to create bank rules so the program will automatically categorise transactions for you: Create rules to speed up reviews in QuickBooks Self-Employed.

If you have any other questions categorising your transactions, please leave a reply below. I'm always here, ready to help. Have a great day ahead.

Thank you for your reply but incoming transactions are not a problem. The fuel and wages part of my question are now sorted thanks- just need to sort the mortgage part. 

 I have a monthly mortgage payment coming out of my linked business account each month. This is not an allowable expense when it comes to working out my tax so how should I categorise it?

Bump!