Being your own boss, working the hours you choose, winning your own customers - running your own business is a pretty good way to make your living. But there’s often a lot more graft required, compared to a ‘normal’ job.
Bookkeeping is the unsexy side of freelancing or running your small business, but it’s absolutely essential to the health of your business and your mind.
If you keep track of your earnings and expenses accurately, it’s easier to do your accounts or make a financial decision when the time comes. Leaving it all to the last minute is a fast-track to sleepless nights and stressful catching up.
You really don’t need to have a natural affinity with maths to make it work. Here’s how to make bookkeeping simple and stay on top of it.
Keep the essentials in one place
Bookkeeping is much harder when you have to root around in folders and programmes to find the right information. Choose a place to record everything and stick to it. It could be a good old fashioned Excel spreadsheet, or some fancy software - the choice is all yours. Just make sure you have a backup in place…
Save all your paper and digital receipts
You might think digital receipts would be impossible to lose. Far easier to manage than scrappy bits of paper, surely! Not necessarily. Your email inbox and PayPal history can store months and years of data, some transactions might not even show their faces unless you master specific search terms.
Avoid manic 11pm searching. Download PDFs and save in relevant folders, or use your expenses app to record purchases in one place.
Update every couple of days, or every week
Small, regular updates can save you a massive amount of time when it comes to tax returns and year-end calculations. Expenses add up over time, and the last thing you want to do on the 30th January is work through a stack of receipts dating back to June.
Recording information at the time also keeps your data accurate, and ensures receipts for petrol don’t get lost with receipts for the weekly shop.
Choose tools that make the sums easier
If you started off with an Excel spreadsheet, you might find yourself outgrowing it when things get busier and there are more variables to consider. Shop around for an accounting tool that can meet your needs now, and has the potential to grow with you. Plugins are always handy, because they add features on like payroll, timesheets, and expenses apps.
Separate the personal and professional
It’s possible to manage your expenses and invoices well without having separate accounts and software, but you’re definitely creating work for yourself by making them close neighbours. Instead of having to separate transactions manually, you’ll see only relevant information on your screen. This makes adding up your earnings and expenses loads easier.
See, you’re feeling calmer already! Bookkeeping has been built up to be this massive, complex admin task. Thanks to all our modern apps, tools, and formulas, you don’t even need a GCSE in Maths to keep on top of it anymore. Make sure you’re adding to it regularly, keep tasks small and manageable, and soon you’ll think nothing of it.
Keep that cash flow coming with the help of Solna. Solna can help you get paid faster with automated invoicing and clever insights. Best of all, it’s completely free.
Do more of what you love and less of what you don’t. Get started now.
in LND