Six Monthly Bookkeeping Tasks to Keep Your Biz Running Smoothly
Let’s face it – bookkeeping is probably one of the least glamorous parts of being a creative entrepreneur. However, staying on top of your business’ finances can really make you feel like a confident and savvy business owner! This doesn’t have to be overly complicated or take endless hours of your time. Here are six (relatively painless) bookkeeping tasks you can perform each month to keep your biz running smoothly.
- Check in on your bank account balance.
Your business’ bank account balance is the easiest way to get a quick look at the financial health of your biz. You should set aside time to log into your account, check your balance, transfer any money to/from savings if needed, and read over your transactions. First, make sure there’s nothing there that looks strange or even fraudulent. Then, if you’re keeping track of your transactions elsewhere (like in a bookkeeping system, spreadsheet, or notebook) you can quickly match your transactions and make sure everything reconciles.
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- Scan or save important receipts paperwork.
Make an effort to hold on to any documentation that might be important for tax time. Scan any paperwork and save it to a cloud-based storage system so you can reduce paper clutter in your workspace. Save important email invoices or receipts as PDFs and save them as well. It’ll be nice and easy to have all your financial records in one place (you’ll thank yourself later!).
- Summarize your monthly revenue expenses.
If you aren’t using accounting software or a formal system to compile and analyze all your financial transactions, you can still set up a “quick & dirty” method to summarize your monthly sales and expenses. Open a simple spreadsheet or notebook, and just use a calculator to quickly sum your sales for the month. Do the same for your expenses (you can refer to bank account transactions for help with this). The goal is just to become aware of how much you’re really making and spending each month. Keep track of these numbers so you can compare trends and see how you’re doing from month to month.
- Calculate your monthly net profit.
Take the total sales (or revenue) and expenses you just calculated and let’s do some simple subtraction! Revenue – expenses = net profit, aka how much you actually made this month. If the number is negative, that’s a net loss. You’d be surprised how many creative biz owners don’t even know if their biz is actually netting a profit each month. You need this information to grow your business, to set appropriate goals, and to make smart decisions.
- Review your financial performance for the month.
How’d you do this month financially? How’d you do compared to last month or this time last year? If you had a net loss, why? Did you make a large investment in a new website or product line? Did you have a lackluster launch that needs some fine-tuning? This is an important step – take your financial, quantitative results and see what helpful qualitative info you can glean from them. If you neglect your numbers, you’re missing out on a whole wealth of info that you can use to take your biz to the next level.
If you neglect your numbers, you’re missing out on info that you can use to uplevel your biz.
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- Plan ahead for next month.
Set financial goals based on your yearly budget and your past performance. It can be super-motivating to set a sales or revenue goal for the month. Don’t forget to look at your expenses too – do you have any big expenses coming up that you need to plan ahead for? Take the lessons learned from last month and move forward with them. Where can you do better next month? Look at the calendar when planning for the month and make sure to account for any holidays or events coming up.
You CAN take control of your bookkeeping by performing these simple tasks each month. This will increase your awareness of the money going in and out of your business, which is the first step to becoming confident about your biz finances. Your business’ financial info shouldn’t be something that drags you down. It should be something that you can use as a tool for smart decisions to move your biz forward.
The more you know about your finances, the better decisions you’ll make, which leads to MORE financial success!
guest post by Janet LeBlanc
Paper Spark
IG: @paperandspark | Twitter: @paperandspark
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