Why use a sledgehammer to do your accounting when all you need is a chisel..

Yep… guilty as charged.  I am not the most fastidious bookeeper in the world.  The fact that I hadn’t been keeping track of my business expenses was beginning to weigh on my conscience a little bit.  I figured I need to get an idea of where I stood now so I could have a solid strategy for December.  I tried Quicken and MYOB first edge — but they both required a lot more knowlege that I have about accounting. 

My business is fairly straight forward.  I have a handful of clients on retainer.  They pay me for a certain number of hours each month.  My expenses are mainly web hosting, audio acrobat and my shopping cart.  Not very complicated. 

A week or so ago I found a great spreadsheet - Business Accounting Wisely by Laurie Dart.   The spreadsheet has you enter your expenses in categories each month.  It also includes a summary sheet.  I managed to catch up my bookkeeping in about an hour.  Yes, I know, I could set up a similar sheet myself — but it would take me more than an hour to do it.  At $24.99 — I thought that having someone do it for me was a bargain. The spreadsheet is on sale right now for less than $20.

The system fits my needs really well at the moment.  And I feel so much better tackling one of those pesky tasks that i have been putting off forever.