I am not an accountant, this info is presented for entertainment purposes only, take my advice at your own risk, blah blah blah.<p>I also run my business out of a single member LLC.
Quickbooks for bookkeeping, Turbotax for taxes.
All business income/expenses must go through the business bank account.
Only business income/expenses must go through the business bank account.
Keep all invoices/receipts in a folder, enter them into quickbooks at month end, reconcile with bank statement.
Once you make a profit (and thus have a tax bill), you will have to start quarterly payments of your taxes. The amount is based on how much tax you paid in the previous year. Basically when you file your taxes, along with the tax return, Turbotax generates 4 payment slips for the quarterly estimates for the next year, which have to be mailed to the IRS (but payable to the US Treasury) approx every 3 months, there is a due date on each.<p>A single member LLC is a passthrough/nonexistent entity according to the IRS, meaning there is no "business tax return", everything shows up on your taxes with an attachment (schedule C I think?) for business income/expenses. You'll have to pay both the employee and employer portion of social security medicare, so your taxes will seem higher than an employee's would, but just because the employees don't see that extra portion doesn't mean they aren't paying it -- trust me, their employer considers it part of the cost of employing them and no different than their salary/benefits.<p>Depending on how many transactions you have, it may be worth it to you to pay for a bookkeeper and/or accountant (they are not the same thing). Most of the time I have less than 10 deposits/expenses per month (even though my business is my primary source of income, I am ramen-profitable and keep things simple) so I just do it all myself. 10 minutes once a month to keep quickbooks up to date, an hour once a year to do the tax return, and 4 trips to the post office per year to mail the quarterlies.<p>Regardless of who you hire or don't hire to help you with the bean counting, one thing you never ever do is let anyone but yourself sign checks. Unless, of course, you consider embezzlement to be philanthropic in which case go for it.<p>I am not an accountant, this info is presented for entertainment purposes only, take my advice at your own risk, blah blah blah.