📊 Accounting and Bookkeeping Tools for Small Business Owners
Running a successful business requires being on top of your numbers. Whether you sell on Amazon FBA, eBay, Etsy, Shopify, or anywhere else, you need to be on top of your income and expenses to understand whether your business is profitable or not. In this article, I will be running through the different tools and processes that I use and recommend, all of which are suitable for small business owners that sell products online.
📝 Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Free Expense Tracker
3. Recording Business Expenses
4. Awesome Digital Accountancy Firm
5. Expense Tracking Apps and Websites
6. Xero Accountancy Software
7. Link My Books App
8. Shopkeeper App
9. Differences Between Shopkeeper and Xero
10. Conclusion
1. Introduction
As a small business owner, it's essential to keep track of your finances. In this article, I will be sharing the different tools and processes that I use and recommend to help you understand your business's financials better.
2. Free Expense Tracker
Even if you've only just decided to run your own business, you still need to have a system in place from Day Zero that notes any business expenses that you incur. All of which need to be recorded so that your accountant can properly calculate your profits and how much tax you owe when you start trading.
To make your life and your accountant's life much easier when trying to remember all of your expenses that you and your business have made over the year, I have put together a free expense tracker. Every time that you incur a cost that is related to your business, whether that be buying stock, software, marketing, advertising, or anything else, you need to record the details of it in this tracker.
3. Recording Business Expenses
Recording every single one of your expenses is a must, not only because you'll probably forget what you've spent your money on as the months pass, but also because you'll save your accountant a ton of time in understanding your financials, ultimately making your accounting bill much lower than if you didn't.
4. Awesome Digital Accountancy Firm
If you don't have an accountant yet or you're not happy with the current service that you're getting, check out Awesome. They are a digital accountancy firm that specializes in accounting for people that are looking to sell with Amazon FBA, Shopify, eBay, and more. For viewers of this channel, you can get two months of free accounting and a limited company set up for you for the price of a pound.
5. Expense Tracking Apps and Websites
While there are a lot of expense tracking apps and websites out there, most of them do cost, which might not be the sort of thing that you want to spend your money on at such an early stage in the process.
6. Xero Accountancy Software
Once your business starts trading or you decide that you'd rather your accountant just do all of your bookkeeping for you, you'll want to start making use of Xero. Xero is an accountancy software solution for small and medium-sized businesses. It hooks up to your bank account and your PayPal account and automatically records all of your revenue and expenses, which you or your accountant will then need to categorize.
7. Link My Books App
One app that I highly recommend that you get if you are an Amazon FBA, eBay, Shopify, or Etsy seller is Link My Books. It allows you to connect Xero directly to all of the platforms that you sell on, which will automatically then download details of your revenues, refunds, transaction fees, platform fees, and more.
8. Shopkeeper App
If you are an Amazon FBA seller, Shopkeeper is an app that syncs directly with your Amazon account and tells you what products you've sold and the profit that you've made over the previous day, week, or month. You can also use it for monitoring your advertising costs, inventory levels, and more.
9. Differences Between Shopkeeper and Xero
The easiest way to explain the difference between Shopkeeper and Xero is that Shopkeeper is a profits tool that is designed just for Amazon sellers and it gives you granularity over an individual product sales and profitability, whereas Xero is an accounting tool made for all sorts of businesses to use that allows you to see your overall sales and your overall profits from more of a bigger picture point of view.
10. Conclusion
In conclusion, if you're a new seller to Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Shopify, or just selling products online, start with my expense tracker and remember to keep a record of all of your costs. Then, once you start growing and you progress to the stage of selling or just incurring more and more costs, upgrade to Xero and Link My Books using my discount links below. But before you go ahead and do that, just remember to check if your accountant offers those tools for free, just like Awesome does.
🎉 Highlights
- Keeping track of your finances is essential for running a successful business.
- Use an expense tracker to record all of your business expenses.
- Awesome is a digital accountancy firm that specializes in accounting for people that are looking to sell with Amazon FBA, Shopify, eBay, and more.
- Xero is an accountancy software solution for small and medium-sized businesses.
- Link My Books allows you to connect Xero directly to all of the platforms that you sell on.
- Shopkeeper is an app that syncs directly with your Amazon account and tells you what products you've sold and the profit that you've made over the previous day, week, or month.
❓ FAQ
Q: What is an expense tracker?
A: An expense tracker is a tool that helps you keep track of all of your business expenses.
Q: What is Xero?
A: Xero is an accountancy software solution for small and medium-sized businesses.
Q: What is Link My Books?
A: Link My Books allows you to connect Xero directly to all of the platforms that you sell on.
Q: What is Shopkeeper?
A: Shopkeeper is an app that syncs directly with your Amazon account and tells you what products you've sold and the profit that you've made over the previous day, week, or month.
Q: What is Awesome?
A: Awesome is a digital accountancy firm that specializes in accounting for people that are looking to sell with Amazon FBA, Shopify, eBay, and more.
🌐 Resources
- [Janssen Smith](https://janssensmith.com/)
- [Awesome](https://weareawesome.uk/)
- [Xero](https://www.xero.com/)
- [Link My Books](https://www.linkmybooks.com/)
- [Shopkeeper](https://www.shopkeeper.com/)
