Am I able to manually put expenses in without linking my account

Hello, deviousbullterri. 

Yes, you can. Basically, the Self-Employed platform lets you add expenses and income transactions without a live bank account. I'm happy to share the details with you. 

To do that, you'll simply want to go to the Transactions menu, then click on the Add transactions button. Then, add the details of the transaction and hit Save. 

More details can be found here: Manually add transactions in QuickBooks Self-Employed.

If you don't want to go through the entire process of manually adding transactions, you can upload your bank records instead.

This won't let you connect your bank. Instead, it will use an Excel file for your bank transactions. If you're interested on using this method, feel free to check this article: Add older transactions to QuickBooks Self-Employed.

However if you decide to connect your bank, I would recommend checking this article: Connect bank and credit card accounts to QuickBooks Self-Employed.

After adding and bringing all of your expenses (or any other transactions), you can start categorizing them for your estimated tax calculations. 

When you're ready, you can start managing your estimated tax in the Self-Employed platform. Check this article for a guide: Pay federal estimated quarterly taxes in QuickBooks Self-Employed.

Need another guide on how to do things in the Self-Employed program? You can count on me again for assistance.