Accounts Template

Lovinglife

My husband and I have both become self employed this year we are registered with the Inland Revenue seperately but I desperately need to get some sort of order on our income & expenditure for our tax returns. I wondered if anyone could help me with a template for what I actually need to record, my husbands business is an Ebay based business and mine is a small craft business for which I have just set up a website. I am really at my wits end as I know I should be organised with receipts and recording everything and I have everything there just do not know how I need to record it. They are both really small businesses so if anyone could offer an excel template or something just to get me started I would very much appreciate it or any admin advice. Thank you

Horace

I use an old fashioned accounting book (you can still get them in stationers) and note down the money I get (income/sales) and what I spend for the business (purchase). I even keep a note book in the car to note down my business mileage.

At the end of the tax year my receipts are given to my accountant. I keep a folder with plastic punched inserts in which are labelled Jan Feb Mar etc and I keep one for income. If I get a receipt for somehing that I have bought for the business I note it down on my accounts book and put the receipt in the appropriate month pocket. At the end of the financial year, I keep the receipts in months and total them up and attach a piece of paper to the front stating the month, the type of purchase and the total figure and I give my accountant these plus my accounts book.

You could use excel but I dont want to rely too much on computers.

Lovinglife

Thank you for your response there is some good advice there which I will take on board but unfortunately I will be doing the accounts myself as we do not have an accountant we do not really earn enough to need an accountant yet.

I would also really like to record everything on my laptop which was why I needed the Excel template as I would make sure I have a back up disc.

But once again thank you for the advice I will organise receipts as you have explained.

terra_ferma

This is a template many ebayers use, I found it useful myself:
http://cgi3.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=talkinpeace

steve1980

4 columns in excel.

date

description

income

expenditure.

Savvy_Sue

If the ebay template doesn't do the job ...

steve1980 wrote: »

4 columns in excel.

date

description

income

expenditure.

that will work, but I enhanced mine that so that I could see what kinds of income and expenditure I had (out of school club). So after your four columns, there might be 3 more columns for kinds of income with a 'total' for those cells, and 3 for kinds of expenditure with a 'total' for those cells.

So income might be 'craft item' and 'postage' and I don't know what else, whereas expenditure might be 'craft ingredients', 'postage' and 'ebay fees'.

Then you'd enter your £5 craft item plus £2 postage on one line as £7 initially, then split down in the later columns. I also had a 'check' to make sure I'd accounted for it all.

I don't think I can still find that one, but I have sent out something similar (ie adding and checking) so if you want a copy of that, send me a PM with your email address and I'll send it to you.

Pennywise

Just remember your declarable "sales" is the price paid by the customer on ebay or your website, not the net amount you actually receive in your paypal or bank account. You have to reflect the ebay and credit card/paypal fees in your "books". So if you sell something for £10 plus £2 post, but you only receive £9 and you pay £1 at the post office, your entries are actually:-

Income: Sales £12
Expense: Ebay/Paypal/Credit card fees £3
Expense: Postage £1

Also remember that your tax return figure for "cost of goods sold" has to be adjusted for opening and closing stocks. So if you buy £1,000 of stock in your first year, but only sell half of it, your "cost" figure on your tax return is only £500, not the £1,000 you've actually spent.

Can very quickly become messy if you're using a hand written book or a spreadsheet. I'd suggest you'd be better with a proper book-keeping software - VT's cash book if free - you can download it from https://www.vtsoftware.co.uk - it makes things easier because you can break down every transaction into its components and then reconcile the bank account, credit card account, paypal account properly which will give far more comfort that you've got the basic entries right.

Debras_Angel

Hi,

If you PM me I will happily send you a template I use and lots of other people use it too. It's an excel spreadsheet for outgoings and incomings.

mizzbiz

Google 'free excel cash book'.
The Yorkshire accountancy link is a good one.

A cash book will be enough for a small business until you expand a bit and look for a more complex solution. VT Cash Book is smashing software but will take time to get your head round it. If you just want simple excel accounts, do as I say above.

laurine71

Thanks for the template terra_ferma

Savvy_Sue

Worth mentioning that both Businesslink and HMRC may offer free courses in your area which would be well worth looking into!