For Minute Menu Users - Logging Time Spend Doing Business Things

[MarinaVanessa]

Okay, so for those of you that use Minute Menu I have a question for you. You know how in Minute Menu you can log your time spent doing business tasks, well right now I log these daily on a calenedar and at the end of the week I enter each days worth of tasks but this can take forever.

Well wouldn't ya know that I just noticed that when you add an entry you can pick a start date and an end date . So does this mean that I can take a week and just add up all of the times that I did tasks together instead of daily? For example:

Instead of daily:
1/1/11
Curriculum planning 2 hours
Record Keeping 2 hours
1/2/11
Daycare setup/cleaning 1 hour
Record Keeping 1 hour
1/3/11
Daycare setup/cleaning 1 hour
Curriculum planning 1 hour
Record Keeping 2 hours
etc.

I can weekly:
1/1/11-1/7/11
Curriculum planning 3 hours
Record Keeping 5 hours
Daycare setup/cleaning 2 hours
etc.

How do you guys keep track? Daily or weekly?
etc

[Cat Herder]

If that is true I am going to be so p......

::

[MarinaVanessa]

If that is true I am going to be so p......

::

You and me both honey ... here I am in September and I'm going to be so exasperated if I could have been logging them all in weekly totals since January .

[Cat Herder]

You and me both honey ... here I am in September and I'm going to be so exasperated if I could have been logging them all in weekly totals since January .

Exactly...::

Did you notice I stole that line from "Evan Almighty"....::

There was a marathon during my rainy weekend.

Sheep!

[care-care]

Ive done it both ways .. last year started doing daily then figured it out and did it for the week.. I think in the end it dont matter . You have a paper copy if they want to see it anyways. I save my book I write in and log it in. Need to start by the way for 2011 I think im up to feb and I havent done nothing since.. ugh trial ended need to buy

[MarinaVanessa]

Ive done it both ways .. last year started doing daily then figured it out and did it for the week.. I think in the end it dont matter . You have a paper copy if they want to see it anyways. I save my book I write in and log it in. Need to start by the way for 2011 I think im up to feb and I havent done nothing since.. ugh trial ended need to buy

((banging head against the monitor))
Ugh!! Okay I'll switch to doing it all weekly then. I also keep my written logs as proof so that's not a big deal I just hate that I spent the time hand-logging the time on the calandar and then spent extra time entering all of the indivual tasks each and every singly day in minute menu GRRRR . It was so time consuming.

The only reason why I enter it into Minute Menu is because it automatically does all of your math for you for tax purposes at the end of the year and I can figure what my time/space % is on my own quickly when I do receipts. I'm just feeling a little dopey for doing it the hard way all this time.

BTW Buy it! It's so worth it, plus it;s a business expense so it's a tax write off ... 100%. Do it, just don't log your time spent doing business tasks like I did.

[care-care]

oh i am gonna buy it. i just seem to keep putting it off. I need to do so soon so I can log the whole year in and then be on task for 2012 I would of had it all done but my mom passed away in jan and i have been buried in her belongings and paper work. Its been a rough year and tougher cuz I am the trustee of her estate.

[familyschoolcare]

I log my non children in attendance hour monthly under separate categories usually interviews, cleaning, and paperwork.

[Oneluckymom]

I'm assuming your logging in all this for tax purposes? Can you deduct the hours put into the business and how much?

[DCMom]

I couldn't live without Minute Menu! Seriously.

I jot down the time I spend daily in my day planner, then transfer the totals for the week into MMK on Mondays, when I do payroll and billing. I do receipts once a month.

I honestly don't know how I survived tax season prior to this software. Before my food program sponsor offered it, I used the good ol' Calendar Keeper and an Excel Spreadsheet. Once I started using MMK, there was no going back. There is no excuse not to have good tax records if you have this software.

I don't have to pay for it, but if I did? I would.

[MarinaVanessa]

I log my non children in attendance hour monthly under separate categories usually interviews, cleaning, and paperwork.

Thanks for this. This is exactly how I'm going to do it starting this month. I'll still keep logging in my time on the calendar everyday but at the end of the month I'll just total up my hours and enter them into minute menu in categories like you said; cleaning, record keeping, meal prep etc. Make smy life so much easier.

[MarinaVanessa]

I'm assuming your logging in all this for tax purposes? Can you deduct the hours put into the business and how much?

The short answer to this is yes, you should log all of this for tax purposes. You don't exactly deduct the actual hours that you spend but what you can do with these hours is add these hours along with the total of hours that children were in your home, which will give you a higher time/space %.

Logging all of the hours children are in your daycare + logging all of the hours that you do daycare related things (record keeping, research, meal prep, networking on Daycare.com ) at home = a higher time%

Having a higher time% will give you a higher time/space%.
Space% X time% = time/space %

Having a higher time/space % means you can claim more shared expenses (toilet paper, paper towels, toys that your kids play with, cleaning supplies).

It really makes it worth it to log all of these hours.

[Oneluckymom]

Thanks MarinaVanessa, that really helps me understand it better.