Easiest Accounting for Non-Accountants

Are you managing a small business of your own and have no accounting background? Have you attended various seminars on accounting for non-accountants but still have no idea what they're talking about? How will you know if your business is earning or not? Even if you see cash coming in, it doesn't mean you're really earning and that you can sustain the growth of your business.

If you have ventured on a small business of your own, then these 3 easy steps to know if your business is earning is definitely for you. By small business, I mean that aside from being its President and CEO, you are also the Vice President, the secretary, the salesman, the accountant, the security officer and even its janitor!

If you have this kind of business, you've probably experienced how hard it is to both handle the operations of the business and perform the back-room and monitoring activities at the same time.

Some people are able to pull it off, either by sheer luck or by a good combination of intuition and natural business skills. But many also fail because they are unable to see the true status of their business and thereby gear their efforts based from there.

How do you know if your business is really earning without hiring an expensive accounting service at the start of your business? Following is a simple way to determine whether you are incurring profits or true net losses.

1.  Make a total of your earnings for the period.

As an example, add up all your earnings for the last 6 months. By earnings, I mean the money you received from sales or from the services you rendered, such as performing landscape services. We will call this TOTAL A.

2.  Make a total of your cash outflows for the same period.

We will call this TOTAL B. Care should however be taken in this step because it is often here where people fail to include many items they are not aware of as having an impact in their business. Include the following:

• Fixed monthly expenses e.g. salary to a personal assistant, monthly rent, internet and phone bills, utilities such as water and electricity consumption. (These are more or less fixed in nature since they are to be incurred from month to month at a rather regular basis)

   

• Cost of goods or services sold. When you sell decorated lamps for instance, the cost of your goods sold is the combined cost of the materials used in order to build the lamp. This includes the lamp stand, the shade, the bulb, even the plug! It also includes any labor expenses incurred in designing or assembling the lamp.

If on the other hand, you're not into selling products but services, like interior design services, the cost of your services is the fee you pay for yourself in exchange for the work you performed.

Note that this is different from the salary of assistants first mentioned above. Note also that the fee you receive from the work you performed is not the same as the revenue you made from your business.

Consider this. A business is not a job. When you have a job, you don't spend anything for the business of your boss. You don't pay for your office electricity. And you certainly don't pay for his secretary's salary!

But when you have a business, even if you're the one performing the main work at the start, you take care also of all the costs of your business.

Also, if you wished to, you could have just assigned that work to someone else who'll be working for you. If this happens, what money will you receive from your business then?

 

• Proportionate expense for your furniture, fixtures, equipment and other big and costly assets that you acquired. Why proportionate? Because assets like these that you buy at the start of your business are not likely to be bought again the week or month after they've been bought. They are usually used for many years, hence compute only the relevant proportionate amount for the period (say 6 months to be consistent). How do you compute this?

Total Cost of Asset x    Period Used (in years) = Expense

Useful Life (in years)

Example:

$ 5,000 x 0.5 years= $ 500

5 years

3.  Finally, deduct Total B from Total A.

Total A – Total B = Profit (Loss)

If it's a positive figure, CONGRATULATIONS! Your business seems to be doing well and earning. If on the other hand, it results in a negative figure, don't worry. It doesn't necessarily mean that you should give up. But you can assess your situation from there and make wiser decisions based on your current business position. Good luck! I wish for you the best.

© Jocelyn Soriano for I Take Off The MASK!, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: accounting for non-accountants, business, consulting, easy accounting, entrepreneur, is your business earning, money, self employed, small business

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101 Ways to Earn Extra Money

Want to earn Extra Money? See this 101 ways to earn extra money and augment your current income.

1. Make money online. Start a blog and register at google adsense. You can also promote products via amazon or other affiliates like clickbank.
   

2. Write your own e-book and sell it too! It's as easy as uploading a PDF copy of your file at LULU.COM. All you have to do next is to wait for your extra money coming in. No printing cost or long waiting time for your printed copies to be disposed! If you don't have time to write your own e-book, you can have 50% commission for selling my e-book SUCCEED IN YOUR DREAM JOB NOW! Promote to friends, facebook friends or twitter followers ;)

3. Dig up your antique items at home and sell it at auctions, flea markets or at e-bay.

4. Learn website design and get paid for designing your friends' personalized websites. You can also go freelance and expand your market worldwide. Easily learn website design in a matter of months by enrolling at IT schools or learning via correspondence in your own preferred time at PENNFOSTER.COM.

5. Master SEO (search engine optimization) and be an expert in giving advice on how websites could rank better at google.

6. Enjoy playing computer games. What? How could you earn extra money by playing and having fun? - No kidding. Various on-line role playing games have their own systems of wealth that can translate to real cold cash. Rare items in virtual worlds are sometimes bought in cash via arrangement between players.

7. Sharpen your writing skills and get paid by blogging for others or by writing reviews for other websites.

8. Study some more and write not only e-books but literary masterpieces and bestsellers. Be amongst the ranks of Tolkien and J.K. Rowling!

9. Be a celebrity blogger and get invited for motivational and personal development talks and seminars. Yes of course, you get paid for it! Unless you feel so altruistic and decided to do it for free.

10. Be a lifecoach, someone people consult with and ask for guidance in helping them reach their life goals or change their bad habits. You don't even have to be a psychologist! Schedule your sessions and get paid by the hour.

11. If you're well versed with accounting, economics or finance, you can be an advisor in that area and get paid for your expertise.

12. You can work online and earn money from home.  Check out these FREELANCE Websites.

13. Start an on-line English teaching job and get to work from the comforts of your own home.

14. If you enjoy photography, grab that camera and take poster-perfect pictures you can sell as postcard designs, calendar backgrounds or stock photos at the internet. See STOCKXPERT.COM

15. For the naturally gifted and artistically inclined, make a charcoal painting of your friends and enjoy your extra money.

16. Teach guitar lessons to kids in your spare time.

17. Teach piano lessons.

18. Teach voice lessons.

19. Enroll in personal and career development schools and teach what you've learned part time.

20. Teach Japanese, Spanish or French.

21. Be a nanny.

22. Rent a spare rooom in your house.

23. Do a garage sale of your old clothes.

24. Be an Avon Lady.

25. Sell insurance.

26. Sell real estate and earn extra money from your commissions.

27. Be a dance instructor.

28. Bake cookies and sell them as gift items.

29. Start a small food-catering business.

30. Be a wedding planner.

31. Design wedding souvenir items.

32. Start a day-care for children left by working parents.

33. Write lovely poems and send to greeting card companies like BLUE MOUNTAIN ARTS.

34. Plant some flowers and sell them.

35. Teach swimming lessons.

36. Join song-writing competitions.

37. Join scriptwriting contests.

38. Do modelling stints.

39. Sell some made-to-order cakes and pastries.

40. Sew some baby clothes and sell them.

41. Write some children's stories and submit to publishers.

42. Buy some piglets, let them gain weight and then sell them!

43. Buy some chickens then sell their eggs.

44. Rent your van.

45. Rent your sports equipment.

46. Start a cooperative's store.

47. Accept plumbing jobs from neighbors.

48. Sell old newspapers and magazines to recycling hubs.

49. Do stand-up comedy on weekends.

50. Be a clown at children's parties.

51. Start a food-cart business and sell hotdogs, waffles, donuts and the like.

52. Rent Halloween costumes.

53. Do Santa

54. Connect some cute beads and turn them into pretty bracelets, necklaces or anklets you could sell.

55. Sell some jewelry.

56. Walk some dogs.

57. Design personalized mugs.

58. Sell personalized T-shirts.

59. Make cute stuff toys.

60. Embroider pillow cases.

61. Do tutorial jobs.

62. Do carpentry work.

63. Teach self-defense

64. Do home massage.

65. Teach yoga.

66. Sell home-made chocolates for Valentines or Christmas.

67. Sell home-made muffins.

68. Do magic shows.

69. Be an events organizer.

70. Join TV game shows.

71. Learn computer trouble shooting and repairs.

72. Be a tourist guide.

73. Make knitted shirts, sweaters, or scarves.

74. Be a disc jockey at night.

75. Make special candles.

76. Make home-made beauty soaps.

77. Open a junk shop.

78. Open a small internet cafe.

79. Rent your home to a movie location shoot.

80. Place a bet with a friend that you can lose so and so pounds in two weeks. You'll save on food and earn extra money!

81. Open a car wash.

82. Make a brilliant invention, then have it patented and sold, haha!

83. Sell a high-traffic website.

84. Buy a lottery ticket and pray hard to win.

85. Refer friends to credit card companies and earn commissions.

86. Sue an evil creepy old villain and win the case!

87. Trace your family tree and claim a possible inheritance.

88. Find rich business partners to finance your bright business ideas.

89. Pray for inspiration.

90. Be a street performer.

91. Find a mentor.

92. Seek help from friends.

93. Read books on getting rich, write another one, then sell it.

94. Give and ye shall receive!

95. Believe and it shall be given you!

96. Read www.itakeoffthemask.com to improve your relationships, your money and your total happiness.

97. Ask your boss to retire early and be the administrator of his funds.

98. Get promoted.

99. Just find a higher paying job.

100. Sell jokes at Readers Digest.

101. Follow a treasure map. Hopefully, it will not only lead you to extra money but to such a kind of life and happiness you've been searching for all along. :-)

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© Jocelyn Soriano for I Take Off The MASK!, 2010. | Permalink | 22 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 101 ways to earn extra money, adsense, amazon, blog, blogger, e-bay, e-book, earn money from home, earn money on-line, extra money, freelance, google, Internet marketing, lulu.com, make money on-line, money, Search engine optimization, seo, sideline, stock photos, turn hobbies to cash, way to earn extra money, Web design, Web search engine, Website, working from home

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If water is the blessing, and if the blessing is in abudance, maybe we ask why some receive more of it than some of us do.  And so we look at lakes far wider than the rest, or oceans for deeper and clearer, or waterfalls stronger and more majestic than many.  And then we look at creeks and small trickles of water, of canals that lay stagnant and could not deliver such a powerful flow. 

Can we now see it better?  Can we now see how water (life's blessings) can be so abundant, and how at the same time, we seem to have so little of it?

If we want to have more of it, like a big lake perhaps, it's up to us to dig more deeper and to ALLOW more of the water to pass thru, to flow and to come in.  The bigger the space we carve, the more water there will be, the more share of blessings we can have in the infinite abundance of life!

© Jocelyn Soriano for I Take Off The MASK!, 2008. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: abundance, art of allowing, blessings, law of attraction, money, prosperity, receiving, wealth

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