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My wife runs as a sole trader doing consultancy. We're trying to find a package to keep track of the finances. These are less than 20 income and expense transations each week. I'm having problems finding a package that handles liabilities well. I want to be able to allocate a certain % of the income to different caragories (liabilities) such as salary, leave, tax. I want to do it in such a way that I can get a rolling total of the money allocated for each catagory. eg net income = $1000 then this is split; $750 wages, $150 leave, $100 tax - after 3 months I want to see how much money is available for each catagory.

I've played with quickbooks easy start and home & business and I can't find an easy way to do this. It would be great if I could set some % for each catagory so the software automatically caculates how the net income is to be allocated.

Any sugestions on what package can do this?

Kym

A sole trader is not an employee. The categories you mention sound like what you would use for employees of a company, and sole traders work very differently. I would advise getting a QuickBooks expert to come in and set up something for you. Tell them how and why you want the separate categories and they should be able to translate that into one of the QB products.
Maybe read up on sole traders, too, to see how a sole trader is defined.

the post above is correct sole traders do not draw a wage or salary.

i would recommend the qb easy start if you do not have any plans to expand the business down the track or take on employees or have no need to customise invoices or anything.

for a little extra money you could get the QB plus package this will be a worthy investment as it will take your business anywhere you want to go.

I made the mistake of getting easy start and my business out grew its abilities.

as for the way you want to track transactions this is all in the way you set up your chart of accounts.

you should  set up an income account to track revenue from services provided and a set of expense accounts to track expenses. (this is a dumbed down way of describing this much more income liability and expense accounts will need to be created for accurate tracking of your business)

use an equity account to track personal drawings your wife makes from the business.

when you run a profit/loss report the "bottom line" is your wifes taxable income.

a balance sheet will display the equity that your wife is drawing from the business.

If you want to set things up the way you have described you have chosen the wrong business structure, it should be a company if she wants to draw a wage and the company will be taxed 30% on its profit and your wife will pay individual income tax on the wages she draws.

i would suggest professional advice on your business structure from an account.

If the business is indeed a small business with a small annual turn over remain as a sole trader.