Business tracking gives you a dedicated space to manage your business finances right alongside your personal finances — without the mess of mixing them together. Track income and expenses, filter by business, and prep for tax season, all inside Monarch.

• Who this is for
• What you can do with business tracking
• Setting up businesses
• Viewing your business finances
• Tax preparation (Schedule C)
• Frequently asked questions

Who this is for

Business tracking is designed for people with income beyond a W-2, including:

• Freelancers and sole proprietors
• Single-member LLC owners
• Rental property owners
• Anyone tracking one or more small income streams that flow through to personal taxes

Note: Business tracking is not yet optimized for use with S Corp or C Corp setups.

What you can do with business tracking

With business tracking, you can:

• Create distinct businesses (for example: a consulting business, an Etsy shop, or a rental property).
• Assign accounts and transactions to each business.
• Filter your views to see one or more businesses at a time, or switch back to your household view.
• Access richer reporting for each business: Sankey charts are now business-aware, key charts can be grouped by business or household, and a Profit & Loss table shows exactly what each business is earning and spending.
• Prepare for tax season using the Business Tax Prep report, which maps your transactions to IRS Schedule C line items for easy export.

Setting up businesses

1. Go to Settings → Businesses and click “Start tracking your businesses” (or click from your dashboard widget).
2. Click Get started when the setup wizard appears.
3. Tell us your situation — the wizard first asks if you’re already tracking a business in Monarch your own way, or if you’re starting fresh. Your answer tailors the guidance you’ll see after setup.
4. Add your businesses — give each one a name, legal structure, and an optional logo or color.
5. Assign accounts — assign any bank or credit card accounts used exclusively for that business. If you don’t have dedicated business accounts, skip this step — you can manually assign individual transactions to a business or use transaction rules to automate assignment.
6. From here, the guidance branches based on your situation:
   1. If you were already tracking a business in Monarch, review how to carry forward your old system.
   2. If you were starting fresh, you’re all set! You can now continue on to review transactions, set up rules, or look at business tax prep.

Reviewing transactions and categories

Take a moment to review and refine your transactions and categories.

• Transactions from assigned accounts are attributed to your business automatically — but you can adjust individual ones as needed. For example, if you paid for a business expense from a personal account, or accidentally charged a personal purchase to a business card, you can reassign those transactions individually.
• For transactions that are partially personal and partially business (like a home internet bill), use transaction splitting to assign the appropriate portion to your business entity.
• Transactions automatically inherit the business of the account they belong to. If an account isn’t assigned to a business, its transactions won’t be attributed to one by default — and won’t appear in Business Tax Prep until attributed to a business entity.
• If any business expenses were part of a broad category like “Business Expenses,” consider refining them into more specific categories like "Restaurants & Bars" or "Software" to improve your tracking and reports. You can also add custom categories.

If you were already tracking your business

If you’ve been managing business finances in Monarch your own way, here’s how business tracking maps to what you were already doing.

• If you used the business category group

  You can keep your existing categories exactly as they are. In fact, any category works — Monarch’s defaults or custom ones you’ve created. There are no restrictions. As long as your accounts or transactions are assigned to a business entity, all business filtering, charts, and Business Tax Prep will recognize those transactions regardless of the category they’re in. No recategorization required.

• If you used tags

  Businesses give you the same filtering power as tags, plus significantly more. Here’s how to migrate your existing setup:

  • Bulk move your history — filter transactions by your existing business tag, then bulk-edit them to assign to your new business entity.
  • Update your Rules — if you have rules that set a business tag, update them to also set the business field.

Once migrated, you’ll get richer reporting: Sankey charts with more visual functionality, the ability to group and filter by business entity across reports, a profit & loss table, and business tax prep — none of which are available with tags alone.

Viewing your business finances

After setup, you can use the business filter across Monarch to switch between:

• A specific business view
• Your household view

This gives you a “separate but connected” experience: your business finances stay separated when you want clarity, but you can still understand your complete financial picture in one place.

Note: Business tracking is focused on income and expense tracking — it doesn't cover invoicing, payroll, or accounting workflows.

Profit & Loss table

The Profit & Loss table gives you a structured breakdown of your income and expenses across your household and each business.

To access it, go to Reports → Cash Flow and select the table icon from the chart type options (next to the Sankey, bar chart, and stacked bar chart icons). The Profit & Loss option only appears once you have at least one business entity set up.

The table is organized into three sections:

• Total income — expands to show your household income and each business's net income (gross income minus business expenses), broken down by category.
• Household expenses — your personal expenses, also broken down by category.
• Net cash flow — the bottom line: total income minus household expenses.

You can expand any section to see category-level detail, and click a category to view the individual transactions behind it. Use the group-by dropdown to switch between viewing by category or by category group.
 

Tax preparation (Schedule C)

The Business Tax Prep tab, found under Reports → Business Tax Prep, helps you organize your business transactions into Schedule C format and export a summary for easier tax filing. It is a preparation tool, not an official IRS document, and is available to Monarch Plus subscribers who have at least one business entity set up.

Note: The Business Tax Prep tab is only visible once you have at least one business entity set up in Settings → Businesses.

How it works

Business Tax Prep maps your Monarch categories to IRS Schedule C line items. Monarch applies default mappings based on common categories, and you can customize those mappings to match how your business actually operates. Each time you open the tab, you select which business entity and which tax year you want to review (one entity, one year at a time). You can also select a specific quarter to help calculate quarterly estimated tax payments. Currently supported tax years: 2025 and 2026.

Note: Business Tax Prep only includes transactions attributed to a business entity — category mappings alone aren't enough. You can assign accounts to a business in Settings → Businesses or directly from the Accounts page using the Edit assignments (or Edit businesses, depending on the scenario) button.

Step 1: Organize and map your categories

• Monarch automatically maps the applicable categories to Schedule C income and expense lines using default rules — review and adjust these mappings to make sure they reflect how your income and expenses are actually categorized in Monarch.
• You can remap categories manually, including assigning multiple categories to a single Schedule C line item.
• Any categories without a mapping appear in an Unmapped section with a warning. Unmapped categories are not included in any Schedule C line items or exports.
• To exclude specific transaction types from your Schedule C — for example, prepaid estimated taxes, which aren't deductible on Schedule C — create a dedicated category and leave it unmapped in Business Tax Prep. Unmapped categories are excluded from all line items and exports.
• Click into any category to see the individual transactions behind it, and open the transaction drawer to edit details as needed.
• Toggle empty categories on or off depending on whether you want to proactively map them in advance.

Note: Monarch's Schedule C support covers Part I (Income) and Part II (Expenses). Parts III (Cost of Goods Sold), IV (Vehicle Information), and V (Other Expenses) are not currently supported.

Step 2: Export your summary

Once you've reviewed your mappings, you can export your Schedule C summary in two ways:

• PDF — A clean summary of Schedule C totals, formatted for easy reference or to share with an accountant.
• CSV — A structured export of your Schedule C data.

You can optionally include transaction-level detail alongside the line item totals, which is useful for seeing more detailed reporting in a single document or for importing into other tax or accounting tools.

Note: The Schedule C report is a preparation aid. Monarch does not provide tax advice, and the exported report is not a substitute for a filed tax return. We recommend reviewing your export with a tax professional.

Frequently asked questions

Is business tracking available to all Monarch members?

Business tracking is available to Monarch Plus members. All Monarch members continue to have full access to Goals, budgeting, Cash Flow, Net Worth, and all core features. Learn more about Monarch Plus here.

Can I set up a separate budget for my business?

Not at this time. Right now, business tracking is designed for members tracking one or more small income streams that flow through to personal taxes where budgets are co-mingled.

That said, if you'd prefer to keep business transactions out of your budget entirely, you can do that. In Settings → Businesses, there's an 'Include in budgeting' toggle. It's on by default, meaning business transactions are included in your budget. Turn it off to exclude them.

Can I track partial ownership of a business or business account?

At this time, partial ownership cannot be tracked within the business tracking feature.

My categories are mapped in Business Tax Prep, but they’re showing $0. What’s wrong?

Business Tax Prep only includes transactions that are assigned to a business entity — a category mapping alone isn’t enough. If a transaction isn’t tagged to a business (either directly or through its account), it won’t appear in the report. Check that the relevant accounts are assigned to your business in Settings → Businesses or from the Accounts page using the Edit assignments button, then return to Business Tax Prep.

I want to exclude certain transactions from the Schedule C summary. How do I do that?

Create a dedicated category for those transactions and leave that category unmapped in Business Tax Prep. Unmapped categories are excluded from all Schedule C line items and exports. For example, prepaid estimated taxes aren’t deductible on Schedule C — to keep them out of your Schedule C summary, categorize them in something like “Prepaid Business Taxes” and leave it unmapped.