I have made no secret about the fact that I am a big fan of the spreadsheet. While I am not someone who knows how to do really complicated things with my spreadsheet software programs, I can do some basic accounting and organize different things quite nicely in them. One of the tasks that I do about once a month that I find very valuable for my home business (and personal finance) is to chart and track my monthly income.
I choose to track my income in a couple different ways; I track it by source (client) and then I also look at it month-to-month, quarterly and annually. For me, it helps to keep things in perspective if I can look for how things change year by year, as well as compare what this February was like compared to the last two, and see if I have certain quarters of the calendar year that seem to be more profitable than others.
Also, by separating out the revenue by source, I can see how spending more time on one client may or may not have paid off. Sometimes I see that the extra time I spend does not pay off in increased revenue and it actually hurts me–I lose more in the “neglected” sources and clients than I gained by putting in the extra time and energy. Of course, I may have gained other intrinsic things that don’t show up on a spreadsheet, but if I’m going to pay attention to my bottom line, I do need to keep the numbers at the forefront of my mind.
This may sound complicated, but I can do it all quite simply in a spreadsheet file. It is just a matter of columns and imputing the information as I get it. Then, whenever I need to take stock and evaluate how I am doing, I have the information at my fingertips and I can get a pretty good idea of what is going on with my home business revenue.
Also: Keeping Track of Business Expenses
Could you Work without a Computer?