Book keeping procedures?

[Former_Member]

Just started selling on Etsy this summer. I'm sorting thru my receipts: expenses (mostly), sales, etc... I had a completely unrelated business years and years ago, and used QuickBooks, but I no longer have access to that program. I'm simply making an excel sheet using the categories I mentioned above. I doubt i'm going to have enough sales to off set all my expenses, so just trying to get in the habit of good record keeping.

Would love to hear what others are doing to keep track of everything. Thanks.

[Former_Member]

I'm using Outright.com to help track all expenses. I like it so far!

[ConcertinaPress]

I also use Outright (now called GoDaddy Bookkeeping) and I love it!

[Former_Member]

I use an Excel spreadsheet.

For each item in the shop it has a line with
quantity sold
cost of materials
selling price
shipping charge
date sold
customer id
date shipped
Etsy listing fees
Etsy selling fees
Paypal fees
postage paid

I have running totals on each $$ column so I can easily see at a glance exactly where I stand at any time during the month.

I also keep a separate spreadsheet that lists all of my supply purchases for the year.

I break those out by
crafting supplies
shipping supplies
general office supplies

[JaxtonandJill]

Oh my goodness I love the outright.com that is so awesome. thank you so much, it makes my day, I love seeing my shop in the green, all the extra savings that put me into the green not the red. I love that.

[Former_Member]

Love Outright. If you upgrade it will figure and export everything you need for taxes, too.

[Former_Member]

I used outright for a while, but find it easier to use do it in Numbers (Mac program). Bookkeeping was a little confusing for me until I took a small business class, now I actually really like bookkeeping.

[ohmyclumsyheart]

I have a wicked book keeping system.

I have a folder named ACCOUNTS
with folders for each of the months
and inside each of those folders I have SALES and EXPENSES.

Inside the sales and expenses I save a copy of the transaction and save the file under the transaction ID or reference number.

The only paperwork I have are receipts, train tickets, and the odd purchase.

I then collate all the data into a spreadsheet detailing every single months incoming and outgoing. I do that at the end of every month to keep it all up to date and ready for taxes.

[ArteOfTheBooke]

I'm lucky enough to have a mother-in-law who has extensive experience in business accounting, and she's setting up a QuickBooks system for us. Thank god! Our business is a multi-headed hydra and has way outgrown the primitive spreadsheets I had been working with. (We have been an LLC for several years, for my contracting business, and our Etsy sales and show sales have been pulled under that umbrella--ugh! I despise pulling together all the information by month and by category for our accountant at the end of the year, over 5 bank accounts.)

[ConcertinaPress]

I think the thing people haven't pointed out about Outright yet is that everything is AUTOMATIC - you link it to your bank, etsy, paypal account (it can only see the numbers, you can't change anything from outright) and then you set categories once and it'll automatically categorize things for you into income, expenses, categories for each and as other people have mentioned if you get the paid version (I do) it'll tell you how much estimated tax to pay each quarter.

[MoabBagCompany]

I use Google Spreadsheets to keep track of all the details. I download the .csv files from Etsy and Paypal and plug those in to a spreadsheet, and I keep separate ones for wholesale and consignment. For accounting I'm using Wave:

https://www.waveapps.com/

And I've been liking it so far. It's super simple and free! You can also separate personal and business accounts, which is nice.