♥️♥️ Bookkeeping Essentials for Your Handmade Business ♥️♥️

Ok, lets address this…. And I apologize, but sometimes a question is first answered with other questions in order to get to the heart of the matter.

• you indicate you’ve downloaded a bunch of bookkeeping spreadsheets – it sounds like none of them met your needs, what were they missing?
• what did you not like about the spreadsheets you downloaded, that caused you to download more?

Spreadsheets don’t make for good bookkeeping systems.  They just aren’t powerful enough, even though there are many people who claim they are.  There are just too many places that you end up having to enter the same information and too many chances to make a mistake. 

Usually, the people who create those spreadsheets lock them down so tight (so you can’t break some formula) that you end up not being able to customize it to fit your needs – so of course they aren’t going to work!  PLUS, the spreadsheets were created based on what someone else thinks you may need to track.

Ask just about any business what they use for their bookkeeping system and I’m betting the answer won’t be spreadsheets – it’ll be SOFTWARE!

As to taking bookkeeping courses, that’s great – you understand the principles.  But the problem with taking bookkeeping courses is that everything being taught is either theory or it’s done a general way that is good for ALL types of businesses.  Leaving you to try and apply it to your own handmade business, which can be difficult.

The ♥️♥️ Bookkeeping Essentials for Your Handmade Business ♥️♥️© course:

• Has content that makes & encourages you to take action – by getting you to focus on what YOU want your financials to tell you about your business.
  • This is accomplished by learning what makes up a Chart of Accounts for a handmade, creative, or craft business. What types of smaller categories go into the 7 big categories of Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Income, Cost of Goods Sold/Cost of Sales, (Overhead) Expenses, and Other Income/Expenses.
  • Once you’ve learned about those smaller categories, YOU choose what you want and need to track in your bookkeeping system.
  • From there, I walk you through creating your Chart of Accounts in Wave or QuickBooks
  • and teach you how to use the system you just created by teaching you HOW enter the day-to-day transactions.
  • Best of all, the entire course is geared toward handmade, creative, and craft business owners.
• Helps you change your attitude about numbers and doing something wrong – Ok, so the “nice” people like to say change your mindset – I call it a change in attitude.

No matter what you call it – those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. 

I’ve setup entire bookkeeping systems using software for thousands of companies and then taught the owners how to use those systems, in my 30+ years of being a bookkeeper. 

That’s why I created this first-of-its-kind handmade business bookkeeping course that focuses on automating critical bookkeeping tasks using real bookkeeping software – instead of spreadsheets, like everyone else is recommending.   A course that will help you create actual results.

• Powerful lessons – each lesson is designed to make you think about what you might want to track, then make a decision if it’s important or not, and then finally implement and do the work.
• Ongoing support – as your business grows or when something funky happens and you have a question or need some clarity – all you have to do is ask, and I’ll be happy to help.

Many handmade business owners think they need to be making gobs of money each year before they implement a bookkeeping system – that’s total BS!

The best time to start a bookkeeping system is when your business is small – this is when you develop good bookkeeping habits and gain confidence in your ability to enter the day-to-day transactions.

The truth is, you have to plan and be prepared so that when the money starts rolling in, you’ll have a system in place and know how to handle it.  Otherwise, you’ll be a hot mess of stress trying to implement a system when you don’t have the time, knowledge, or someone to help you out.

Ok, first off……

When you call yourself a “newbie” it’s like saying you don’t believe in yourself.  It’s like you’re discounting all the knowledge and experience that you bring to the table. You not believing in yourself is a tragedy.  So, stop that shit!

Now that I have that out of my system……

♥️♥️ Bookkeeping Essentials♥️♥️ wasn’t created for either a startup or an established business in mind. 

Bookkeeping systems don’t care if you’re a new business owner or if you’ve had a handmade business for years. 

If you are just starting out you learn how to put a system in place, learn to use it, and learn how the things you want to know about your business flow into your Schedule C tax return.

For established handmade businesses, it’s a time to review all the things you don’t like about your current system and create a bookkeeping system that is meaningful to you and learn how software can keep all your financial information in one place that’s easily accessible.

Whether you are a new or established business owner, I do ask that you come with a desire to learn and a commitment to implement what you learn.

I’m not here to tell you what I think you need to keep track of in your bookkeeping system.  Instead, I’m here to offer suggestions about things YOU might want to keep track of and then let you decide while I teach you how to do it.

I’m also not here to try and convince you that this whole handmade business thing will or might work out. If you haven’t already made the commitment to do whatever it takes to MAKE it work – then honestly, don’t bother to join.

I’m here to teach you that if you’re going to have a business you need to act like a business and that means good bookkeeping habits and records. 

If you want to do something, you’ll find a way.  If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse. ~~ John Rohn.

I’m going to counter that with ………Are you willing to learn?

Taking bookkeeping classes or college courses in accounting aren’t necessary – but a desire to learn is!

When I first started my bookkeeping career back in the 1980’s all I had done was high school bookkeeping & accounting classes, where everything was done on paper – based on generic examples from a book.   

I’ll be totally honest and tell you that those textbook examples did nothing to prepare me for doing the bookkeeping for a real business.

Luckily, I had someone take me under their wing and teach me PLUS I had a desire to learn.

To calm your fears, in the last 20 years I’ve helped people with little to no bookkeeping experience handle the bookkeeping needs of construction companies making hundreds of thousands to billions of dollars in income each year.

While it might sound a little on the arrogant side (its really not BTW), if I can teach someone with little to no bookkeeping experience handle that much revenue, I can certainly teach you!

If you want to do something, you’ll find a way.  If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse. ~~ John Rohn.

LOL, I use the term “handmade business” because it’s so much easier to say than listing all the possible different types of businesses out there!  It doesn’t make any difference If you make it, design it, or perform services for it.

Honestly, it’s for any type of handmade business, whether you are a:

• Product maker
• Pattern designer
• A combination of the two
• Or even a tech editor

There are several things that everyone has to keep track of in order to complete their Schedule C tax return, but that’s where the similarities end. 

Each of you could (and probably will) end up with a very different Chart of Accounts for your bookkeeping system – after all, each of your handmade businesses is totally unique. 

It’s my “job” to offer up suggestions and ideas and it’s your “job” to decide if you want to track that suggestion or not.

Well, the answer to that question could be a deal breaker, now, couldn’t it?

We all have choices.  And we all find time for things that are important. 

If you won’t find the time to invest in learning about how to do the bookkeeping for your business and implement strategies that work – then you either

• Waste time doing Google searches, trying to figure it out on your own
• Download spreadsheet after spreadsheet trying to find something that works for you
• Sign up for a spreadsheet course that seems to imply that a year’s worth of bookkeeping can be done in a few short hours
• Or sign up for a course that seems to imply that bookkeeping is only necessary to prepare your tax return

I’m not trying to be snarky or condemn you.  I just want to make sure that you know it’s YOUR CHOICE.

As far as the finances to, honestly, I can’t (and won’t) tell you what do about that.  If you really don’t have the money to invest, then now isn’t the time for you to sign up for this course.

But if you’re just saying you don’t have the time or the money while also wasting time on things like Candy Crush, Wordle, spending hours scrolling through Pinterest, or buying a course because someone said you needed it ——- well then this is more a question of priorities rather than time or money.

So, make a commitment.  Make a decision.  Stick with it.  Make your choice as to what is or isn’t important.

Honestly, this could take me HOURS to explain – so I’ll try to keep it short.

Bookkeeping software:

• keeps ALL of your information in just one place (unlike spreadsheets, where you have to have multiple ones)
• there’s NO NEED to start from scratch every year with a new file (unlike with spreadsheets, where you have to make new empty copies each year and start from scratch)
• allows you to enter the information just once, in one place, and it goes to all the right places (unlike spreadsheets where you could have to enter the same information in multiple spreadsheets)
• has built-in reports that you access at the click of a button – that lets you compare the current year to the previous year without any extra work on your part, and shows you where you’ve spent more or less (unlike spreadsheets, where you have to pull up both years and do all the math when you compare them)
• allows you to create reports that show you how many of a specific item that you’ve sold this year, last year, over multiple years – in total on all the various platforms that you sell on (unlike spreadsheets where you have to create a new one in order to figure out this information and then keep it updated)
• makes entering transactions easier.  Let’s say you have a payment that you make every month, quarter or year, with bookkeeping software you can set it up so that the software automatically enters that payment when it’s supposed to happen unlike spreadsheets where you always have to enter than payment yourself)
• can track inventory and Cost of Goods Sold for you, just by entering the purchased materials in inventory, and then recording the sale of the item (with spreadsheets this is all a manual process and it’s so time-consuming)
• remembers the expense category that payments to each specific vendor is assigned to – so you don’t have to worry about something going to the wrong place (with spreadsheets, you have to do all the remembering – and then hope you didn’t make a mistake)

These are just a few of the things that real bookkeeping software can do for you. 

Spreadsheets can be great tools for certain things, but they just really weren’t designed to handle bookkeeping tasks -even though that’s what so many coaches are telling you.

I’ve found, and I bet you agree, that one spreadsheet leads to another, which leads to another.  Depending on what you want to know about your business.