Bookkeeping Basics for Small Business Owners (free template!)

If you are a small business owner and you want to DIY your bookkeeping but you're not sure how, then you are in the right place because in this video I'm going to teach you everything you need to know to be able to do your own bookkeeping in just a few minutes a week using some simple free tools. So before we get into the tutorial itself, let's talk software for a moment. There are lots of great options out there like QuickBooks, Xero, or Wave, and a lot of these tools have some really cool features that can help you to automate your bookkeeping, which as your business grows can help you to save time. But when you're first starting out, honestly, I wouldn't recommend using any of those tools. Not only are they expensive, but it's actually better to be more hands-on with your books, especially at the beginning, so that you can really see every transaction that's coming through and better understand your business finances. And this doesn't have to take a lot of time either. For those reasons, when you're getting started with bookkeeping, a free spreadsheet like Google Sheets is actually going to be the very best tool for doing bookkeeping for your business. Bookkeeping doesn't need to be fancy to be effective. The IRS requires that every business has a bookkeeping system, but the mandates on what that bookkeeping system needs to look like are very minimal and you can easily comply with them with just a spreadsheet. So let me show you how. I've put together a simple spreadsheet that you can use to track your transactions and generate a profit and loss statement every month, which I will show you exactly how to do in the tutorial. And also I want to share this spreadsheet with you for free. So check the description down below for a link to download this spreadsheet to use in your own business. Okay, now let me take you over to my computer and I'll show you how this works. Okay. So here we are inside Google Sheets. And the very first thing I want to bring to your attention is that in this sheet I have set up, there are multiple tabs. Now what these tabs are going to enable you to do is to track different aspects of your business's books. And what's really cool is that these different tabs on the sheet actually talk to each other so that you don't have to enter every single number in some of it will be automated for you. So the sheet where you're going to spend the most of your time is this one right here called transactions. This is where you are going to enter in all of the money that your business makes and spends. And that's really the bulk of what bookkeeping is, is tracking those transactions. So let me just show you how this works. So let's say, for example, that your business bought some pens from office Depot or something like that. So you just type in a description of what you bought, and then you enter in a date, and then you are going to enter in the amount of how much that costs. So let's say for example, that these costs $5.99, but this was an expense. So instead of typing $5.99, we're going to push negative $5.99. And then you just select the category. Now I've programmed in a whole bunch of categories here. These are specifically the categories that the IRS requires that businesses use to track their expenses. So I would recommend not changing these expense categories for these pens. We are going to use the category office expense. Now, let me give you another example or two. Let's say that you got your oil changed on your business vehicle and that cost you $35. So again, negative $35.99, and then we'll choose the expense category. And this one would go into the vehicle expense category. Now let me show you the little bit of magic that I've programmed into this. This sheet is actually going to talk to this tab of the sheet. This is the income statement or your profit and loss. Those two terms mean the exact same thing. But what we have here is we have a list of all of your income categories and a list of your expense categories. And I have put formulas into these cells so that when you have an expense over here and you tell it what expense category it is in, well, that translates over here. And so now you can see that we've got that $5.99 office expense and that $35.99 vehicle expense. Now let's say that you hired an independent contractor in your business to build you a website, for example. So we can put into the description category, website design, and then let's enter in our date here. And then for the amount, let's say that this cost us $1,500. And now we are going to choose our expense category. Now for the expense category here, you're going to choose the subcontractor expense category. There isn't one for like web design or something like that. If you're paying a subcontractor, just choose the subcontractor. Now, something that you might be wondering is, but how do you actually pay the subcontractor? Because a lot of the time, unlike if you are just ordering some pens online, or you go to a local business where you are having your oil changed in your car, well, when you hire a subcontractor or a freelancer online, you somehow have to send them the payment. And sometimes that's easier said than done. And that's why I've asked Melio to sponsor today's video because Melio is my preferred payment platform. So I used to pay all of my contractors on different platforms and with different methods. Some people wanted me to pay them via PayPal. Some of them wanted me to do an ACH transfer from my bank. That was kind of complicated to set up. Some of them sent me an invoice I could pay via credit card. Well, recently I realized that I could really simplify things, streamline them and save costs by instead using Melio to send all of these payments. What's really cool about Melio is that it allows you to pay all your bills from one platform, but your vendors or contractors still get paid exactly how they want to get paid. But at the same time, you get to pay however you want. So for example, if you want to use your credit card to pay the vendor, but they want an ACH transfer, you can do that with Melio, which is so cool. So you both get to choose your preferred method for sending and receiving that payment. Melio can even mail a check for you. So let me show you how easy it is to pay a contractor or a vendor with Melio. All you need to do is log in. Like I said before, your vendor or contractor doesn't need to make a Melio account themselves at all. So once you're logged into your account, then you just click this button right here for a new payment. And then I've just been adding my bills manually, although you can sync it if you want. Then you type in your vendor's name and the amount that you are going to be paying them. And then you choose if this is a one-time or monthly or weekly payment. And then optionally you can enter the bill number that it was, and then you'll select the due date for that specific bill. Like when were you supposed to pay that bill by? And then if you want to add a note, you can do that as well. And then you save and schedule the payment. Next, you confirm what payment method you want to use. So like I said before, you can either make that payment from your bank account completely for free, or you can pay via your credit card or your debit card so that you can be earning whatever points or rewards your card offers for a 2.9% processing fee. Once you've selected that payment method, you just click continue. And then you just select the date that you want the payment to be deducted from your account on and click continue again. And then you just click confirm. And just like that, the payment is sent quick, simple, easy, probably takes less than a minute to do. You should definitely give me Leo a try. If you're looking for a way to pay vendors or contractors who work for you, because it has got to be the easiest way to do it. And I love that there are no fee options on the platform in the description below this video, you'll find the link to start using Melio for free today. So let's go back over to our spreadsheet now. So we paid this web designer $1,500, let's say using Melio. And so now if we go over to the income statement, we can see that this has been added to the subcontractor category right there. Now, something else that you might notice is that I've also programmed this sheet to be adding up all of our expenses. So you can see the total of all of our expenses right now. Now, right now, honestly, our business is not doing so hot because we have spent a fair amount of money. And so we are at a net loss of over $1,500. So I think it's time that we make some money. So let's go back over to our transaction spreadsheet. Let's say that we worked with a and that Sam Jones paid us $3,000 for the work that we did for him. Now notice that I'm not using a negative sign here because this was income that the business earned. And then we will choose one of the income categories. So I have programmed in here three income categories, cash, checks, and credit card. For this example here, I'll say that Sam Jones paid us with a credit card. And so now when we go over to the income statement, because of the formula that I've programmed into each of these cells, so right here, you can see the formula itself. Now we see $3,000 showing up in our credit card income category. And you can see that the profit and loss has updated so that now we've got $3,000 of income less our $1,500 of expenses means that our business has earned about this much in profit. Now one little tip for you is that it can be more helpful to instead of tracking by payment method to track based on the products that your business sells. So for example, if your company sold mice and also microphones, well then you might want to add those as your two income categories so that you can see how much you're making from selling mice versus how much you're making from selling microphones. So all you would need to do to update this spreadsheet with those expense categories would be to come in here and click that little dropdown, then click this pencil icon that is the edit button. That's going to open up this list of the dropdown criteria. So these are all the expense categories I programmed in as well as the income categories. And you can just change this text right here to change the name of the income category, or you can remove it, or you can add another item. Then just click done and you will have a new item or a changed item in your dropdown. Now, if you do that, you will want to also update the category that is listed over here because otherwise the amount won't show up. Like if you made a category over here in the transactions sheet so that you had a category for all the computers that you sell, well then that's not going to be reflected here because there isn't a computer income category. So all you need to do is literally just change the text right here so that it says income computers, for example. Now, probably your business doesn't sell computers, but you might enter something like coaching or courses or the name of a specific course that you sell or the name of a specific product that you sell. Okay. So that is pretty much it. Now, you know how to enter transactions in your business. I would recommend that you enter them at the end of each working day, any money you spent that day, any money your business earned, just enter it in as a transaction. And then we also talked about how you can pay your contractors and vendors using Melio, and then how your profit and loss or income statement will be automatically generated for you each month. So this whole system, it literally will take you a few minutes or even less, even just like a couple minutes per day to maintain, but it is going to make sure that all of your books stay completely organized, completely up to date and categorized how the IRS wants them to be categorized. Now, like I mentioned earlier on, you can grab a free copy of this spreadsheet that I've programmed for you to use in your own business for free. So make sure you check the description down below for the link to download this spreadsheet for yourself. Okay. Well, that is it for this video. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to check out Melio. If you are looking for an easy way to pay your vendors or your contractors, or for your clients to pay you up next, watch this video right here. If you want to learn how I run my half million dollar brand in just 20 hours per week.