Record keeping...

[J.Marie Designs]

I'm just getting started. I'd really like to know how you keep track of your receipts and sales? Quickbooks or something similar. Do you keep a running log of inventory?

[bugsandbows]

I use Quickbooks Pro!

[zillawilla]

Hey, I think I can share a bit of advice. Keep all of your info for the month together....sales, reciepts, milage, etc. Otherwise tax time will not be so much fun. my first year as a small business owner the tax lady laughed me out of her office. Now, I have a manilla envelope that everything goes into every month. On the out side write down all the info that will be needed (i.e. totals). At the end of the year all you have to do is add everything up. I also made my own spread sheets to use to keep it all together. If anyone wants this info i would be glad to share it.

[J.Marie Designs]

Originally Posted by zillawilla

Hey, I think I can share a bit of advice. Keep all of your info for the month together....sales, reciepts, milage, etc. Otherwise tax time will not be so much fun. my first year as a small business owner the tax lady laughed me out of her office. Now, I have a manilla envelope that everything goes into every month. On the out side write down all the info that will be needed (i.e. totals). At the end of the year all you have to do is add everything up. I also made my own spread sheets to use to keep it all together. If anyone wants this info i would be glad to share it.

This is great advice! I did this with my daycare.

[creativekiddos]

If your sales are not to high it is much easier to claim your income as craft income.

I had a hard time with this last year so now I keep a small coupon organizer in my purse everywhere I go. Every time I spend money on supplies I place the receipts in there so do not loose them. Once a month I I go through them and add the total up and then place it into a nice pink expandable file folder I bought at Target. Then I check my paypal account for purchases for supplies I bought on line or on ebay. When I order off of a website like Rabom TRR, uline etc. I always print out my on-line receipts and place them in my folder.

My website keeps track of my sales in a spread sheet for me which is nice. The hard thing to remember is to write down when and order is not paid for so you don't end up claiming income you never received. It is also a good idea to keep in mine your sales could reduce your refund by over $500.00 at the end of the year so don't price your items to cheap or you will be giving them away buy the time you figure in your expenses.

[jennygoff]

I use quickbooks Pro...pay all expenses with my credit cards...automatically download all those expenses into quickbooks

[princess_stinkypants_mom]

I've tried quickbooks, quicken, whatever they all are (I've downloaded like 3 of them) and maybe it's because I wasn't used to them, but I just found that more of a pain.

All of my orders get stacked on the counter until i feel like dealing with them and I have just a simple table I made in Word that I keep track of orders monthly. Everytime I buy something online, I use a different table for supplies-or if I buy something in the store I just compile the receipts and add those in when I get a chance. Everything is filed by month in my accordion file thing.

Then, when it's time to do my Sales or Use taxes, I just have to pull out that table I made and can do it all quickly from there.

I also have a spreadsheet in Excel that I made for the year that shows my expenses, profits, etc.

I don't keep track of my inventory. I would almost think that would be impossible? I know he asked me about it when I did my taxes this year but I can't imagine how easy that would be to have to divide everything up individually and then try to configure how much ribbon I used for bows, etc. to keep track of it all. I just gave him an estimate.

[raggedyamys]

Here is a thread that was started on this topic not too long ago. See my response kinda long. HTH
Receipts and Orders