Keep Track of Hours - Taxes

[mrs.meg]

Okay, I have a dumb question. for tax purposes. I watch one boy 8 hours a day, brother comes at 3 and I keep him for 2 hours, so is that 10 hours I count for taxes or 8? Just a little confused on this. Don't quite understand!

[tymaboy]

Do you have a sign in/ out sheet or a software program that you keep track of the hours that each child is there? If not I suggest getting something to keep track of each child (even if you get paid by day or week) Your childcare hours are the hours for the entire day with kids in care. Say your 1st child arrives at 7am & your last child leaves at 6:30pm that would make an 11.5 hour day & that is what you would claim unless you do other child related activities that day such clean up toys or a parent interview then you would also count the time it took do those activities in on your hours for that day.

Hope that makes sense to you.

[mrs.meg]

I just manually have kept track of it because I only babysit 2 boys and they are siblings. Do you have a software program that you recommend? I have everything written down on a calendar, because I just don't have but 2 to keep track of.

Thanks!

[gbcc]

I use minute menu system. I LOVE it! It records hours, time space percentage, mileage, income, expenses etc.

[kitkat]

I just manually have kept track of it because I only babysit 2 boys and they are siblings. Do you have a software program that you recommend? I have everything written down on a calendar, because I just don't have but 2 to keep track of.

Thanks!

Right now I only have one family also. Even when I had 3 families, I still did everything manually. I use a spreadsheet and record for each child each day:
Start time & end time
Total hrs that day
What was eaten for snacks and lunch
At the end of the month I tally everything up and save it for tax time.

Do you do your taxes yourself or have them done professionally? I do my own. This year I bought the Family Child Care 2009 Tax Workbook and Organizer. It was the best $25 I ever spent! If you don't have it, you should look into buying it. Well worth the money!

[Chickenhauler]

It boils down to how many hours of the day you have children in care in your home as a percentage of the whole day (24)

If the first kid shows up at 7am and the last kid leaves at 3pm, you have 8 hours of your day with children in your care.....33.33% of the day.

Then you get into the fun of space percentages.............

[mac60]

I have children from 6:30 to 5:15, then add 1 hour per day for preparing and clean up....so 11.75 hours per day x 5.

[Carole's Daycare]

I have children from 6:30 am to 5:30 pm, and allow myself 1 hr/day prep and cleanup, and 3 hs lesson planning and curriculum prep and extra deep cleaning. If I'm open longer for some reason, or on the weekend I shampoo carpets etc I make a note in my calendar keeper to add those hrs, or subtract if I ended up closing early (never happens!) and make a total on each month, so for example if I'm getting 12 hs x5= 60 hs, + whatever hs I noted on the calendar for extra prep or cleaning (rearranging daycare furniture, tax/recordkeeping, viewing training videos at home etc. So I actually write down a monthly total when I'm doing my other recordkeeping, usually around 250 /260 hs