The expense tracker for small business that isn't QuickBooks

Honest answer: it depends on what you actually need. If your business has employees, accounts receivable, inventory, multiple revenue streams that need P&L by segment, or any investor or lender who wants formal financials, you want QuickBooks Online ($35-$80/month) or Xero ($15-$78/month). If you're a sole proprietor or single-member LLC with under roughly $250,000 in revenue, no employees, and you mostly need to capture deductible expenses for Schedule C, Cash Compass plus a separate business checking account plus a yearly accountant visit will save you about $400-$900 per year and an enormous amount of complexity. The 2024 SBA data shows about 81% of U.S. small businesses have no paid employees — Cash Compass fits that profile well.

Map your Cash Compass categories to Schedule C Part II lines. Common ones: Advertising (line 8), Car & Truck Expenses (line 9, plus a separate mileage tracker if you drive much), Insurance (15), Legal & Professional (17), Office Expense (18), Rent or Lease (20), Repairs (21), Supplies (22), Travel (24a), Meals 50% (24b), Utilities (25), Other (27). Plus Home Office if applicable. Don't try to invent your own taxonomy — match the IRS form so the CPA handoff is mechanical. The 2024 IRS Schedule C statistics showed average reported expenses on solo-prop returns around $44,000, with about 60% of that in three categories: vehicle, office/supplies, and meals/travel. Get those three accurate first.

Yes, by category, not by account. The IRS strongly recommends a separate business checking account for legal and audit reasons — Cash Compass doesn't replace that. What it does is let you tag every expense as Business or Personal so the CSV export at tax time gives the accountant only the business rows. The cleanest workflow: a separate business checking and credit card, all business charges go through them, log each one in Cash Compass with a business category. Personal spending stays in a personal category group. At year-end, export and filter. If you currently run everything through one personal account, fix that before scaling — commingling is the single most common audit-trail problem for small business owners.

Cash Compass doesn't calculate estimated taxes for you, but it tracks the deductible expense total that drives the calculation. The IRS expects quarterly payments on April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15 if you expect to owe over $1,000. The typical rule of thumb is to set aside 25-30% of net income (revenue minus deductible expenses) for federal income tax plus 15.3% self-employment tax on the first $168,600 of 2024 earnings. Cash Compass shows the deductible total in the category chart — multiply your revenue minus that total by 30% as a rough estimated-tax reserve. Pair it with the IRS's Form 1040-ES worksheet or a tax-prep app for the actual calc.