fbpx

Business Growth Advocate

Business Tips Elizabeth Mommy to Millions

Your Business, Your Money, & the Judgment Free Zone.

How you take care of your personal finances is how you take care of your business finances.

Marquita Miller Joshua, MBA

Ouch! Well, I mean, I guess that could be a good thing or a bad thing, lol. If you’re really good at keeping track of all your finance, that quote is reassuring. If you’re like most everyone else, that quote sends a little shiver up your spine.

Thing is, small business money management doesn’t have to be a scary thing. To wipe away your fear and gather a bit of confidence that you can do small business finance, watch my interview with Marquita Miller Joshua, then check out ideas and links below to help you do just that!! ❤️

Table of Contents show

Marquita Miller Joshua and the Judgment Free Zone

More great stuff from Marquita Miller Joshua

3 Steps to Gaining Control of your Books 💲

There are 3 basic steps to gaining control of your side hustle or small business finances.

  1. Gather all that stuff.
  2. Organize all that stuff.
  3. Make sense of all that stuff.

To reduce the level of stress over all this, you might consider doing one step at a time. To be honest, I only hold myself accountable for one step a day. 😅 That makes the whole ordeal feel a little more manageable.

Here’s an article from Factor Finders on ways to reduce the stress of small business finances even a little more.

Also you might consider getting an Accountability Partner for finances and other “important but not urgent” business tasks. You wouldn’t have to share your actual #’s with the other person – but that you both agree to have your books in order by, say, the 5th of each month (of last month’s stuffs). You’d be surprised how motivating Accountability partners are! I have some worksheets to help, if you decide to go that route.

1. Gather All your Financial Records

Baically, you need to find all the important papers from all the showboxes and far corners of your computer. A basic list would include things like:

  • Business bank statements
  • Business credit card statements
  • Invoices and records of stuff you sold
  • Receipts and records of stuff you bought
  • For a more detailed list, check out this from H&R Block

Once you have everything collected and in one place, the next task is to find a way to organzie it all.

2. Organize the Pile of Records

Depending on how far behind you are, this might be a good way to start:

  • First – sort all the loose pieces of paper by month. If you’re super overwhelmed, check out my article on how to deal with piles of paper that overwhelm you.
  • Then – sort all account statements. If you have statements that are electronic – make a way to sort them by month. If you like online, download and sort them in folders. If you’re like me and like paper

As to HOW to organize them, once you get them together by month, well, there’s lots of ways to get it done!

  • File folders
  • 3-Ring binders
  • Expandable files
  • Software – on your computer or online
    (more info in Do-It-Yourself section)

Of course, once you’ve done the super brave steps of gathering all your papers and organizing them by month and type. It’s time to make sense of it all. 🤓

3. Make Sense of Your Records

What are we even trying to do in this step?!?! Well, at a minimum, it’s so you can file taxes. I have literally met a lady who owned her own lucrative business – who hadn’t filed in three years. That’s how far behind she was in her books – and how scared she was to face this task.

Besides being able to actually file taxes (on time), there’s a lot you can learn by looking at your numbers:

  • Are you making a profit? If so, how much?
  • Are you growing? Or shrinking?
  • What activities are making you the most money?
  • Should you dump one part of the business?
  • Should you expand another area of business?
  • Are you staying on top of your bills?
  • Are you staying on top of collecting money owed to you?

The better you understand your numbers, the better business decisions will be. With good numbers, you can do a deep SWOT analysis (a tool to help you make business decisions).

You can do the work of organizing all the numbers yourself, or you can hire someone else to help you.

Do It Yourself Bookkeeping

Plenty of people with side hustles or small businesses do their own bookkeeping and taxes. If you have a passing knowledge of how to do all this – go for it!

If you don’t have the ability, but don’t have the money to pay someone else to do it, you might check out your area Small Business Development Center or local junior college to see if they have classes to teach you the basics.

Depending on the simplicity or complexity of you books, you may even be able to skip fancy software and just use something like an excel spreadsheet. Otherwise, there’s lots of software options for keeping your financial books in order.

Something pretty cool I found is Quickbooks for Self-Employed. They let you “rent” the software for $7.50/month ($90/year). This keeps your books safe in a cloud (instead of your laptop that your toddler could spill juice on at any moment). Here’s what you get for renting the software:

  • Send and track simple invoices
  • Separate business and personal expenses
  • Maximize your Schedule C deductions
  • Quarterly estimated taxes calculated automatically
  • Automatic mileage tracking

You can upgrade to $12/month to be able to file taxes via TurboTax straight from the software (one state and one federal tax return filing included).

But – not all of you – including me – have the time nor talent to set up and manage your books. You may need to ask for help from others.

Get Help with Bookkeeping

Like Marquita Miller Joshua mentioned in her video, some of you just need help filing taxes. Others of you may just need “set up” help to make sure you’re tracking everything properly. Others of you would rather hand over a shoebox of papers and let someone sort out that side of business for you.

When hiring a new bookkeeper, here are some questions to ask in your initial meeting:

  • What scope of services do you offer?
    Tell them the scope of services you need.
  • What certifications do they have? They learned on the job? A degree? A CPA? Certified in QuickBooks?
  • What is their area of expertise? How familiar are they with your industry?
    Do they have experience with small businesses? Funny enough, bookkeepers are like doctors. You wouldn’t go to a heat doctor for brain surgery. Make sure the bookkeeper knows how to do your particular set of books.
  • What list of papers/documents do you need from me?
  • Are you coming to my business, or should I get the papers to you?
  • Do you want the papers in person or scanned/uploaded/emailed?
  • Do you prefer to communicate by phone, email, text?
  • What is your pricing structure?
  • Can I get a referral? (Then actually call a couple of references.)

Whew! You made it to the end! You’re ready – or at least more ready – to take care of your small business finances! Congratulations. As my teacher says to my daughter, “You can try hard things.” You got this!

More Ways to Connect with Elizabeth

Disclaimer: A couple of the links in this blog post are affiliate links. That means, if you buy the book from the link, I make a few pennies, lol. But it’s no extra cost to you. ❤️

Related Posts