February 28, 2026
When you are making under $100,000 per year, QuickBooks is overkill. You do not need double-entry accounting, payroll management, or inventory tracking. You need to know three things: how much money came in, how much money went out, and what you owe in taxes. Notion handles all three for free.
Create a database for every dollar that comes into your business. Fields: date, client name, amount, payment method, product or service, and category. Use a formula to calculate monthly and yearly totals. Create a chart view to see revenue trends over time.
Every business purchase gets logged: date, vendor, amount, category (software, marketing, office supplies, professional services), payment method, and whether it is tax deductible. Attach receipt photos directly to each entry so everything is in one place at tax time.
A single page that pulls from both databases using rollups. It shows this month's revenue, this month's expenses, and this month's profit. Plus year-to-date totals for all three. You can see your financial health at a glance without opening a separate accounting app.
At the end of the year, filter your expense database by tax-deductible items and export it. Filter your income database by category and export it. Hand both to your accountant or use them to fill out Schedule C yourself. What used to be a weekend of organizing receipts becomes a 10-minute export.
Once you are consistently making over $5,000 per month, have multiple revenue streams, or need to track inventory, it is time to move to QuickBooks or Wave. But until then, Notion keeps it simple and free.
Our Business Finance Tracker for Notion includes the income database, expense database, profit dashboard, and tax prep views. Duplicate it into your workspace and start tracking today.
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