keeping records

[dikim]

I'm okay with my accounts, but I'd like to improve my record keeping on my self-published books. (ISBNs, publication dates, sales figures, income, promos, etc) Any advice or suggestions welcome.

[Post-Doctorate D]

I keep track of those details in a spreadsheet.

[Simon Haynes]

I download all the sales reports from the various book sites (amazon kdp, google play, etc) and import them into Salesscanner.

[cecilia_writer]

I have a spreadsheet of book sales and I use my bank statements when it comes to tax return time.

[JRTomlin]

  I don't. I print out all the expense invoices and when I receive the income statements in January, I dump it all in my accountant's lap. 

[Lynn]

I have a spreadsheet with multiple tabs. Several spreadsheets, in fact. I've been keeping up with my book data this way since 2012.

I suggest you keep as much info as possible in one spreadsheet or two, with multiple tabs, update as soon as you have a reason to so that you can trust the system, and backup as often as you can in case of data corruption.

[123mlh]

I keep a spreadsheet of advertising spend/performance that I load into an Access database that has tables for all of my sales for each different vendor. I then use that to track revenues and profit and loss by title, series, and author name. In the past year or two I've started doing so for the current year as well as lifetime performance. I also track P/L by wordcount and by hour spent writing/editing. If I only wrote under one name and in one series that wouldn't be as important, but with multiple names, genres, etc. it helps to see what's really performing well for the effort so I can make an informed decision about what to work on next.

[idontknowyet]

I don't. I print out all the expense invoices and when I receive the income statements in January, I dump it all in my accountant's lap. 

So doing this!!!

[Alice Sabo]

I keep a spreadsheet to track sales and income by book, by month and load all the expenses into Quickbooks.

[twicebitten]

I record much less than I used to. I keep a spreadsheet for (rough) monthly income and expenses, but even that's probably superfluous. I used to do graphs and charts and collect a lot more data, but I think it was a writing avoidance mechanism.  I used to track small newsletter ads' ROI before Bookbub started to like me, but once they did, the only data I need to know is "Bookbub works incredibly well and nothing else does," which even with my sieve-like memory I can manage to memorize that much.

Expenses all go through my business bank account. If I buy something for the biz, I use that credit card or Paypal or petty cash (though I've been on the same $100 of petty cash for six years). That way, at tax time, I just go into my bank account, sort to see only debits, export that as a spreadsheet, and plug the numbers in on my tax form.

What probably was more useful was tracking productivity. It kept me on track to see the "words written" slot being filled in every day, and if I tracked my mood or location or so on, I could see how external factors might change my word count or words/hour count. And I learned how many hours it takes for me to write a book, which is much fewer than I would have guessed before I began to track. (assuming I get down to work and don't fiddle about chatting on forums or whatever. ;) )

[Maggie Ann]

I quit tracking individual book sales a long time ago. Too many books; too little time.

I do a nice spreadsheet at the end of the year for my accountant or at the very least, a folder with each type of expense and an adding machine tape. Sometimes I like to take it old school. It's also important that I add up my actual sales and deduct the amount on the 1099 because that difference is tax deductible.

Every year, I say I'm going to do this month-to-month, and here I am, almost the end of August, and I haven't done a darned thing. 

[Lynn]

I quit tracking individual book sales a long time ago. Too many books; too little time.

I never started that so I didn't have to quit. But I knew when I started in 2012 that I was going to write what I wanted so if sales of any one title or series aren't that great, it doesn't matter to me. I'll write the sequel anyway. I've done it a few times and have another few to do.

The one time I did think maybe I should, I made a spreadsheet that took me days to get filled with the data, looked at it, and realized my gut was right on target about what was selling best and least, what was growing and what wasn't. I backed up the file, then deleted it.

I agree with you 100%. Too much trouble to keep updated.

[JRTomlin]

Let me say that I do at least organise and label all my expenses for my accountant. I don't just hand her a shoebox of random receipts. 

[Maggie Ann]

Let me say that I do at least organise and label all my expenses for my accountant. I don't just hand her a shoebox of random receipts. 

Yeah, but how much fun would it be to do that just once. 

[JRTomlin]

It would be fun...except that I want her to keep on working for me. 

[LilyBLily]

I know someone who does hand in a shoebox to his accountant. He says he'd rather work a few extra hours in crawl spaces than mess with the receipts. Makes sense to me.

I do two very simple spreadsheets--could be two tabs of one file--with expenses on one and income and other tax events on another. Updated as events occur. Categorized by IRS Schedule C categories, so no need to shuffle them at tax time and meanwhile I know where I am all year long. This is helpful as the year draws to a close and I see I haven't spent much on a particular category and may want to. My mileage notebook--a physical object--gets manually copied to one of these files every few months, with all trips categorized. At the end of the year, everything's basically ready.

[idontknowyet]

Let me say that I do at least organise and label all my expenses for my accountant. I don't just hand her a shoebox of random receipts. 

One o my friends was an accounted. he literally made all his money from just doing this. Clients would send him boxes and he would dig through them. He made some seriously nice money.