Who this is for: Managers
📋 The PriceRight Pro Business Cycle — 7-Part Guide
- Part 1: The PriceRight Pro Business Cycle — Start Here
- Part 2: Find and Track Your Prospects
- Part 3: Build an Estimate That Wins Jobs
- Part 4: Present, Sign, and Collect a Deposit
- Part 5: Invoice, Get Paid, and Manage the Job
- Part 6: Close the Job and Ask for a Review
- Part 7: How PriceRight Pro Sets You Up for Tax Season — You are here
💼 Why this matters
Nobody taught you how to run a business. They taught you your trade. The pricing, the taxes, the deductions, the quarterly payments — you figured those out the hard way, usually in February, usually while staring at a box of receipts. PriceRight Pro was built so that the business education happens automatically, in real time, across all eight stages of your cycle — not as a separate crash course the week your taxes are due.
Most contractors dread tax season not because their taxes are complicated — they’re usually not — but because they spend it reconstructing a year’s worth of financial history from incomplete records. Hunting through bank statements. Trying to remember what that charge was for. Guessing at mileage. It’s not a tax problem. It’s a documentation problem.
If you’ve used PriceRight Pro consistently across Stages 1 through 8, you don’t have that problem. The documentation happened automatically — every time you logged an expense, tracked a mile, closed a job, or recorded a payment. Stage 9 isn’t a reconstruction project. It’s a report.
What each stage contributed to your tax record #
Stage 1 set your Tax Reserve — the percentage of every dollar you earn that goes into a separate account before you spend it. If you followed the formula, your quarterly tax payments were never a surprise. They were already set aside.
Stage 2 and 3 built your client and lead source records — which matter for Schedule C categorization and for understanding which marketing spend was actually deductible.
Stage 4 attached cost data to every job — materials, labor, subcontractors. Those aren’t just estimate inputs. They’re cost-of-goods records that reduce your taxable income.
Stage 5 created signed contracts and approved estimates — documentation that supports your income figures if you’re ever asked to substantiate them.
Stage 6 logged every payment collected, every milestone hit, every closed sale — your gross income record for the year, organized by date and client.
Stage 7 tracked every business expense with an IRS Schedule C category already attached, every mile at the current IRS rate, and every receipt with a photo. The AI Receipt Scanner categorized your purchases at the moment of scan. The mileage tracker logged your trips in real time. You didn’t have to reconstruct any of it.
Stage 8 closed every job with a final cost record — actuals logged, payments reconciled, client relationship documented. The data is clean because it was entered when it happened, not pieced together afterward.
What you actually do in Stage 9 #
With your record already built, Stage 9 is about using it — reviewing your numbers, catching deductions you might have missed, calculating your tax picture, and getting your books into your accountant’s hands.
The Tax Planning module gives you a full tax picture: your estimated quarterly payments, your self-employment tax breakdown, your effective and marginal rates, and a set-aside recommendation based on your actual income. For contractors who’ve been guessing at their quarterly payments all year, this is often the first time they’ve seen the real number.
The Missed Deduction Checklist flags expense categories that are commonly deductible but often overlooked — home office, vehicle depreciation, professional memberships, annual software subscriptions. If you haven’t logged any expenses in a category that applies to your business, the checklist surfaces it.
The 1099 Tracker shows every client who paid you $600 or more during the year. Toggle each one as received when the form arrives in the mail. If your income doesn’t match at year-end, you’ll know immediately — not in April when the IRS does.
When you’re ready to hand off to your accountant, export your Profit & Loss Statement as a PDF — or export directly to FreshBooks or QuickBooks Online with a single tap. Clients, expenses, items, vendors, and invoices all export in the format your accountant’s software already knows how to read.
🗂️ Tax Checkpoint
The deductions most contractors miss aren’t the exotic ones — they’re the obvious ones nobody told them to track: the home office, the vehicle depreciation, the portion of their phone bill, the subscriptions that auto-renew annually. PriceRight Pro’s expense categories map directly to IRS Schedule C lines. If you logged it in the app, your accountant can use it. See Track Home Office and Vehicle Deductions → and Run Your 1099 Tracker and Export to Schedule C → for the complete picture.
🚀 Smart Business Tip
The contractors who pay the least in taxes aren’t hiding income — they’re documenting expenses. Every deductible dollar you don’t track is a dollar you pay taxes on that you shouldn’t. The mileage you logged. The home office percentage you calculated. The equipment depreciation your accountant can write off. These aren’t loopholes. They’re what the tax code was designed to allow for businesses like yours. You just have to have the records to claim them.
You started a business to do the thing you love. You didn’t sign up for a second job in accounting. If you used the cycle — all nine stages, all year — you didn’t have to. The record is already there. Tax season is just printing it out.
How to get started
- Set Up Quarterly Tax Estimates and Your Set-Aside Account →
- Track Home Office and Vehicle Deductions →
- Run Your 1099 Tracker and Export to Schedule C →
- Export Your Books to FreshBooks or QuickBooks →
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