How much is that doggie in the window?
Yeah, that’s about the level of my accounting jargon. I have an MBA from a prestigious international business school and if given the choice between explaining depreciation on fixed assets and letting bees swarm my honey-soaked body … the sting pain doesn’t last that long, does it? You get the idea.
Please be warned that this is a foray into the unknown for me here. I barely even keep track of my income and expenses privately much less publicly, but things need to change if I want to learn what’s working and what’s not. As usual, I am following the Winging It School of Entrepreneuship* and that needs to change if I want to grow. I thought to do this monthy as that seems easier, but maybe quarterly is more manageable? Dunno. *Ha, just realized the acronym is WISE. 😉
What gets measured gets improved.
That’s the basic reasoning for doing this. I do things, I work on this, I have an idea that Project A is successful, but, ahem, I’m embarrassed to admit it, I’m a terrible accountant.
Here’s what I really want to know.
If I take Action A, how does that affect income? Over the short term? Long term? Also, I’m a big believer in weighted values (hey, I said I wasn’t an accountant, but I love math–no, they’re not the same). So if I earn $300 doing something I love versus $600 doing something I hate, there is hidden value in that $300 that … is often worth the difference. Now if I can get a Google Sheets going that can factor in weighted values based on happiness, I’ll put it up for sale. In the meantime, I think I should just start with some basic Income & Expenses.
I’m going to use Google Sheets because I don’t have any better ideas. I’m also not going to put in every single electricity bill and the €4 I spent on a chai latte. For me, it’s about writing income and expenses and writing-related activities. Off the top of my head, that would be things like: books sold, but also the actual revenue from those books sold; income and expenses from courses, advertising for books and courses, maybe throw in passive income for hosting and affiliate income from links. This is where it gets a little fuzzy as I have some odd income streams that have built up over the years and I question whether or not they “count” here as I would like this to be about writing.
Post Post Note: whew, this is quite the undertaking! I’m deep into a Google Sheets document and creating something of a Profit & Loss, but as I add the more I realize I want to track. I will either embed it in this doc below or link to a public version of it. Stay tuned. P.S. It’s pretty ugly in there.