Before you make a budget, you should first have a list of your individual expenses.įor instance, take your needs. In general, a budget contains spending guidelines for specific expense categories. Identifying recurring and common expenses like mortgage or rent payments, helps you plan your expenditures and make a monthly expenses template. The other two are: keep track of all the hours you work in your home (particularly when children are not present) and save receipts for all expenses associated with your home.Monthly expenses template 20 (62.55 KB) What are examples of monthly expenses? The tracking of these meals and snacks is one of the top three things you can do to reduce your taxes. Ask them if this is okay before you do so. Record these meals and snacks each day going forward. Some Food Program sponsors will allow you to record your “extra” servings on your monthly claim form. It’s okay to go back and reconstruct these records for part of a year, but don’t make this a habit. The parents will know that their child ate these meals and snacks and should be happy to sign it.įrom this day forward, keep a daily record of the “extra” meals and snacks served to the day care children. Show your results by month (“January – 22 snacks, February – 20 snacks,” etc.).Īsk the parents of each child to sign the bottom of the paper where you have written, “This represents the number of afternoon snacks your child was served in my program from January 1st to _.” If you occasionally served a dinner or took children to a fast food place for lunch, add this to the paper. Put each child’s name on a piece of paper and use your attendance records to record how many days the child was in your program from the beginning of the year until now. Let’s say you always serve an afternoon snack. If you don’t have a daily record showing all the non-reimbursed meals and snacks you served so far this year, what do you do? Or, you can use any spreadsheet to track these meals and snacks. Or you can use a log found in the annual Redleaf Calendar-Keeper (The log is free online). You can track this information if you use the accounting section of the KidKare software program. This can be as simple as recording “Sally, Monday afternoon snack,” or putting a check mark next to a symbol for a snack each day. The IRS rule requires you to keep a daily record of all meals and snacks served. One snack a day served to one child for a year represents over $200 deduction on your tax return. In an audit the IRS can say, “Since you didn’t keep a record during the year, I’m going to deny this afternoon snack.” I hear providers tell me, “It’s in my contract that I serve an afternoon snack,” or “I always serve an afternoon snack.” This is not enough. Unfortunately, many child care providers assume that they can claim these“ “extra” meals and snacks without keeping any records. See my article, "What is a Popsicle Worth to You?” Meals and snacks served to children that are not reimbursed by the Food Program do not have to be nutritious. You are entitled to deduct up to one breakfast, one lunch, one supper and three snacks per day per child, if you serve that many. It can also include meals and snacks that were disallowed by the Food Program. This includes meals and snacks served that are beyond the three servings a day per child that can be reimbursed by the Food Program. The problem is that most child care providers serve meals and snacks that are not reported on their Food Program monthly claim form. If you are on the Food Program, your monthly claim form contains all of this information. The IRS standard meal allowance rate allows you to claim your food expenseswithout having to keep any food receipts! Instead, you must keep the followingrecords: the name of each eligible child, dates and hours of attendance in thefamily day care, and the type and quantity of meals and snacks served. As a result, these providers lose hundreds of dollars of business deductions when audited by the IRS. Keeping good records of your food expenses seems simple enough if you are a family child care provider who uses the standard meal allowance rate.īut many child care providers fail to keep the records they should.
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