I’ve been keeping my accounts with an excel spreadsheet for years (details blogged here). It worked for me because until these last few months, most of my sales were done in cash or with checks at shows, so I could just include a single line with a total from a show and be done. But I’ve been having more and more PayPal interactions, and it was getting harder and harder to keep track of how much of a sale was for shipping, sales tax, and PayPal fee that I finally bit the bullet and fired up an Outright account.
Once I entered the info for my PayPal account and my business bank account, Outright imported all those transactions. Of course, I then had a heck of a lot of reconciling to do, but I bit the bullet on Sunday and JUST DID IT! And now it should be easy to keep up with, fingers crossed. State sales and use tax is due really soon and it was much easier to calculate the 6 months in Outright then the previous 6 months in my spreadsheet, so fingers crossed this solution is a keeper! I just wish I’d started sooner, but I guess I needed the motivation of an increasing number of monthly paypal payments for premium web hosting to get me off my duff!
Enough about bookeeping though – I’m much rather gaze at bookshelf p0rn! Take a look at this gorgeous library that my twitter pal Nyla Free designed:
You can read (and see lots more pix) about this incredible library transformation on her blog post. As I tweeted to her earlier, I think what I love most is that the books aren’t rows of matching books, or have that rainbow spine thing. It looks like a place where READERS live. I, along with my hubby and boys, absolutely love reading, and yearn for the day when all my books are out and arranged so that I can easily find what I’m looking for. A room like this is in my dream house…sigh…
I’m on a computer roll, and I spent the day working on my messenger bag pattern. I think I actually see the light at the end of the tunnel on this – woot! (knocking on wood, etc…)
4 Responses
Gorgeous library – we want one!
Hey! Thanks so much for the shout out to Outright. We’re so glad you’re finding it easier than our #1 competitor – the spreadsheet. Do let us know if you have any questions or comments.
Now those bookshelves are hot stuff. All those books, all that light, and the workspace right in the middle of it. Heavenly!
You’re welcome Jennifer! The big aha moment I had with outright was I could continue to enter just one big number for the income I get at a particular show…for the longest time I thought I’d have to enter each individual transaction I made at a particular show, which could be anywhere from 10 to 100! That would have added too much work to make this system work for me (every show has a different requirement for payment).
I love that all the paypal fees are automagically taken care of for me. Are there plans to incorporate this same automagicallessnous (yup, I just coined a new word!) for Square fees?
Thanks for stopping by!