Based on my experience, gnuCash is fine - probably more than you need.  I do about as much business (checks/payments) as you and use an OpenOffice spreadsheet.  I used gnuCash with my consulting company, but when it collapsed in a series of lawsuits, I had to pay an accountant $1200 to manually transfer all the gnuCash entries to QuickBooks for the previous four years ($300/year).  It would have been much less expensive to use QuickBooks in the first place.  Assuming you have no business partners and will never need to have your accounting records reviewed by an accountant or lawyers, OpenOffice should work fine.  Simply put each item from Schedule C as column headers, include date, description and mileage, and as you enter the expenses/receipts put them in the right column and come tax time it will take you about 5 minutes to fill out Schedule C as a copy&paste exercise.

For example:

	2011 Blah Blah Business	Mileage	$0.51	$0.56
			Income				Cost of Goods Sold			Expenses
			Income – Products Sold Wholesale	Income – Services	Income – Interest	Income – Products Sold Retail	Cost of Labor	Materials and Supplies	Other Costs	Advertising	Car and Truck Expenses	Commissions And Fees	Contract Labor	Insurance	Interest – other	Legal and Professional Services	Communication	Office Expenses	Rent/Lease – Machinery	Rent/Lease – Other	Repairs and Maintenance	Supplies – Other	Taxes and Licenses	Travel, meals, And entertainment	Utilities	Other Expenses
	Totals	970	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00	$0.00
Date	Description

Except for 2003-2007, I've been using a spreadsheet for the last 25 years.

It's better than a shoebox and you don't have to learn double-entry accounting to use it.

Cheers!

George

On 8/9/2013 4:58 PM, sean ritzler wrote: