Posts Tagged with “microbusiness”

11 Aug 2013
2 Comments

Self-employment is a license to say NO

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Many people go self-employed and gleefully say, “look at all the things I can do.” Self-employment offers the freedom to say YES to all sorts of interesting projects that they wouldn’t have time for with a full-time job.

But the true freedom offered by self-employment is the ability to say NO. Now you can choose to avoid mediocre projects, uninteresting obligations and avoid the drudgery of chores you had no choice but to do when you had a job.

Your time is precious and irreplaceable, so you should absolutely be saying NO more often than YES. Now you can focus your time on the projects that actually excite you, your family and loved ones, your calling – i.e. the stuff that truly matters.

6 Jun 2011
50 Comments

A simple bookkeeping system for your freelance microbusiness

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It’s almost the tax submission deadline (for businesses) again. This year, I handed my accountant my records a whole 5 weeks before the deadline, so she has plenty of time to compute my taxes.

It wasn’t always like this. Filing my tax return in the first 2 years of running my business was a big headache and involved sleepless, stressful nights leading up to 30 June. I’ve come a long way since and thought I would share my process to help individuals just starting out.

Disclaimer: I am not an accounting professional. What follows is what works for me – your own mileage may vary. You should take this article as a guide, and consult a licensed accountant for specific questions.

The Objective

First, let’s be clear about what my system is and isn’t. This process works to:

  • Record invoices and payments (money in)
  • Record expenses (money out)
  • Make it easy for you or your accountant to compute and file your taxes

This system isn’t a solution to:

  • Be an accounting solution
  • Generate financial statements
  • Forecast your business financials

It’s important to stress that this isn’t really an accounting system – it’s more of a bookkeeping system. For most freelancers and sole proprietorships though, it is quite adequate.

If you’ve just started your business, I don’t think you need a full-on accounting solution like Quicken or MYOB. It will confuse you and make it an enormous chore to keep your books in order. Just keep it simple for now.

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