How to Record Crypto Income for Your Books: Reconciliation Basics

Your accountant cannot reconcile what you never wrote down. What to log for each payment, at the time, and where to find it again at the end of the year.

To record crypto income, log every payment on the day it arrives: the date, the amount and coin, its value in your own currency and where that rate came from, the wallet address, the transaction hash, the invoice it pays and any fee. Do it at the time. Rebuilding a year from a block explorer is slow, and some of it cannot be rebuilt at all.

What to log for every payment

Ask your accountant which rate source they want, then use it every time. A consistent method is easier to defend than a clever one.

Receiving stablecoins is not the same as converting them

Two different things can happen to the same money, and they are usually recorded apart.

• Receiving. A client pays you, in stablecoins or into bank details that convert to stablecoins. That is payment for your work. Record its value on the day it arrived.
• Converting. Later you sell the stablecoins to your bank, or swap one coin for another. In many countries that is a separate event, with its own gain or loss, even for a dollar coin sold for dollars.

Keep them as two rows, even when they are minutes apart. Exchange rates are the reason. If your books are in pounds and you are paid in USDC, the pound value on the day it arrived and on the day you sold will differ. Record both. Which events count, country by country, is covered in our guide to whether converting crypto to cash is taxable.

Sources: Guide: is converting crypto to cash taxable?

Matching an invoice to a deposit

The hard part is knowing which payment paid which invoice. A few habits make it easy.

1. Number every invoice, and ask the client to quote the number as their payment reference.
2. Invoice in the currency the client pays in, so what arrives is close to what you billed.
3. When a payment lands, write the sender's name and reference beside the invoice, then the transaction hash of the coins that reached your wallet.
4. If the amount is a little short, note the difference. A sending bank sometimes takes its own charge out of the transfer.
5. Mark an invoice paid when the money is in your wallet, not when the client says it is on its way.

Rampy does part of this for you. An invoice made under Get paid carries your deposit account's bank details. When a payment arrives, Rampy marks the invoice paid if the payer's reference contains the invoice number or, failing that, if the amount is within 1% of the invoice. It emails you when it does. Anything else stays open for you to match by hand, because an invoice marked paid by the wrong payment is worse than one you tick off yourself.

A worked example

A client pays a 2,000 USD invoice into your USD deposit account. The deposit fee is 1.99% of what arrives, with no flat fee, so 39.80 USD comes off and about 1,960.20 USDC reaches your wallet, before any network cost. The receipt shows the exact figures.

Most bookkeeping would show 2,000 USD of income against the invoice, a fee of 39.80 USD as a cost, and the USDC received, with its transaction hash. If your books are not in dollars, add the value in your currency on that day and the rate source. Your accountant will say whether they want it set out differently.

Sources: Rampy: pricing

The Rampy records worth keeping

• The emails. A deposit sends one when the money arrives and another when it is complete, each with a link to the details.
• The receipt for each transaction, under Transactions in the app, with the fee shown.
• Statements: a PDF for any month, or a summary of a whole year, under Statements.
• The CSV from the same page: one row per transaction, with the date, amounts, fees, destination and transaction hash, plus the sender's name and reference for payments into a deposit account.
• Your own invoices, and any messages with the client about what a payment was for.

The CSV gives what was sent and what was received. It does not give a market rate, so add the rate from your chosen source yourself.

When to bring in your accountant

• Before your first year-end with stablecoin income, not after it.
• If you hold stablecoins for months rather than days, because the movement between your coin and your own currency becomes a gain or loss.
• If clients pay you in coins that are not stablecoins.
• If you trade through a company rather than on your own account, because the rules usually differ.

Frequently asked