We are managing my mother in law's care and finances as her permanent guardians since father in law passed away. Need to track all income and expenditures for the courts and to provide them financial reports. We have never done anything like this before but can only hope there is software out there that will help with this. Any suggestions from those of you who have been there before?
guides.wsj.com/personal-finance/managing-your-money/how-to-choose-and-use-financial-software/
Keep in mind that pencil and paper or a spreadsheet will also work in a simple situation like this.
I used to use Excel to keep up to date records on income and expenses for tax returns. I had sheets for medical mileage, out of pocket medical expenses, transportation, premiums, etc. At that time Excel sheets could be linked, so each sheet was linked to either income or deductions, with the linking cell also linked to the corresponding item on federal tax returns.
I.e., medical premiums were in a sheet that was linked to total medical expenses, which was updated each time an entry was made. That, along with items such as real estate taxes, charitable deductions, were linked to a Schedule A sheet, which was linked to the federal 1040.
This resulted in a literal up to date tax return every time entries were made.
I don't know if there are other expenses that might be required for reporting to the court, but you could create any additional categories you need.
This does require some proficiency with Excel; you might want to test Excel first with just a smaller scale series of expenses to get started.
I haven't done this recently, so I don't know for sure if Excel still has this capacity. And right now MS Office was deleted when my hard drive had to be reformatted and it elusively is refusing to reinstall, so I can't check it for these kinds of links.
If this sounds interesting but confusing, just let me know and I'll elaborate more.
Jjariz is right though; it can all be done manually, and often might be easier. One of the keys of these kinds of accountings is to make it easier by recording the expenses as they occur, as you would when managing a checking account. In fact, I would first try it manually to get an idea how you would want to configure the package if you used your own through Excel.