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Refining your book keeping

Gavin

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If you don't like the idea of the latest nifty software for tracking your sales and rounds, and like me prefer to keep it simple and use a spreadsheet. Read on.

As the 2013 - 2014 year end looms , now is the time to make those little refinements to your spreadsheets design, that can see you increase profits with a better picture of what is coming in and what is going out.

I will share all the little refinements and important improvements I have made to mine over the years, and give some of the newbies a few ideas on how to manage there books.

y2j3.jpg


Graphs!

Yep, just sticking in the sales and expenses figures doesn't really give you back any information on your progress. I like to see exactly what I have taken in year to date, and what has actually gone out year to date.

I have three graphs to display this sort of information. As you can see the first is my sales ledger. This shows the total value of all work that has been complete. Then total amount paid, and then the total amount outstanding.

The second is the Profit and Loss chart. As you can imagine. I have my sales, expenses, salary costs, and final my annual profit. The last graph displays a running total of my cash assets; cash on hand, amount in Paypal accounts, and money in the bank.

Seeing all that information at a glance can keep you focused on the main goal, which is to make money.

iqx6.jpg


Group boxes. As you can see on my sales ledger. Grouping data in excel can simplify you sales sheets, ensuring your only focusing on the important info. By tracking the total value of work complete in my sales ledger, as well as tracking invoices paid. I can monitor how much is outstanding at any given time.

Now to the all important list of expenses. I track everything, money spent out of petty cash, the bank, paypal accounts. Even those pesky bank charges on the back of you monthly statements.

1wam.jpg


From one month to the next I like to know my exact profit, and what it is as a percent of my sales. By monitoring the percentage, I see how well things are running. Its the age old saying sales are for vanity and profits are for sanity.

8j5w.jpg


Finally I use a nifty formula at the bottom of my sheet to track all the cash assets for the month and how my sales, expenses and salary costs have effected my bank balance. This is then fed into another bit at the top, which updates my charts, so I can review everything at a glance.

00ge.jpg


So now its up to you. If you have Microsoft excel, great. But if not, open office is free and you can do just about everything you can do in excel.

All the best to everyone in 2014 - 2015.

Written by @laddergarder

 
Can a template be made available for download? This is a great idea

If you don't like the idea of the latest nifty software for tracking your sales and rounds, and like me prefer to keep it simple and use a spreadsheet. Read on.
As the 2013 - 2014 year end looms , now is the time to make those little refinements to your spreadsheets design, that can see you increase profits with a better picture of what is coming in and what is going out.

I will share all the little refinements and important improvements I have made to mine over the years, and give some of the newbies a few ideas on how to manage there books.

y2j3.jpg


Graphs!

Yep, just sticking in the sales and expenses figures doesn't really give you back any information on your progress. I like to see exactly what I have taken in year to date, and what has actually gone out year to date.

I have three graphs to display this sort of information. As you can see the first is my sales ledger. This shows the total value of all work that has been complete. Then total amount paid, and then the total amount outstanding.

The second is the Profit and Loss chart. As you can imagine. I have my sales, expenses, salary costs, and final my annual profit. The last graph displays a running total of my cash assets; cash on hand, amount in Paypal accounts, and money in the bank.

Seeing all that information at a glance can keep you focused on the main goal, which is to make money.

iqx6.jpg


Group boxes. As you can see on my sales ledger. Grouping data in excel can simplify you sales sheets, ensuring your only focusing on the important info. By tracking the total value of work complete in my sales ledger, as well as tracking invoices paid. I can monitor how much is outstanding at any given time.

Now to the all important list of expenses. I track everything, money spent out of petty cash, the bank, paypal accounts. Even those pesky bank charges on the back of you monthly statements.

1wam.jpg


From one month to the next I like to know my exact profit, and what it is as a percent of my sales. By monitoring the percentage, I see how well things are running. Its the age old saying sales are for vanity and profits are for sanity.

8j5w.jpg


Finally I use a nifty formula at the bottom of my sheet to track all the cash assets for the month and how my sales, expenses and salary costs have effected my bank balance. This is then fed into another bit at the top, which updates my charts, so I can review everything at a glance.

00ge.jpg


So now its up to you. If you have Microsoft excel, great. But if not, open office is free and you can do just about everything you can do in excel.

All the best to everyone in 2014 - 2015.

Written by @laddergarder
 
HI Gav. been looking through this, very good, have you seen my thread on expenses? I do something similar to this, although I don't bother with graphs anymore, and I do mine on OpenOffice, which is nearly as good as Windows. My work-lists are linked to my ledger, so as I mark off what's been done, it goes straight to ledger. one interesting thing you might like is, taking this months fuel bill and compares with last years on a 'total to date' basis, and tells me if I am over or under spent on the year.

 

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