The past few days have been devoted to trying to figure out why my accounting system is not accurately reflecting a wide variety of costs and expenditures for the year.

Happily, today I was able to lay hands on some numbers that clearly indicate my head figures are correct but the numbers I have been diligently tending for nine months in Quickbooks are completely fucked up. As you might imagine, I find this maddening as hell.

It appears that yes, I have been entering the transactions correctly into the program, but that the program has been, apparently arbitrarily, excluding a VERY LARGE subset of data from certain cost categories. And by arbitrary, what I mean is a giant swath of actual, money-out-the-door expenditures appear to have been treated as income!

I spend something like fifteen hours a week on bookkeeping, because I am trying my damnedest to be a fucking adult. Yet it seems clear that had I simply waited until year end and gathered the data as I have in the past I would have had an accurate accounting system with no cost to me beyond my (surely less than fifteen hours a week) labor. I am mighty pissed. Here, I’ll just light this pile of several thousand dollars on fire and call it a business expense. That’s not too different from my time and cash investment in this bookkeeping stuff this year. Aargh.