How do you keep track of your finances in your startups and why?
Hi Indie Hackers, I would like to find out what system/method/tools you use to ensure you are well organized financially and keeping track of expenses and income. It would even be better to hear how non-salaried people are doing it.
Cheers!
Lots of great answers here; I think it also depends on where you are in your business. For just starting out, I dedicated one of my personal credit cards to side projects only, and used Excel to track expenses. That made it pretty easy at the end of the year to tally up side-business expenses for tax purposes.
As the projects have grown I've now setup a separate bank account and am exploring services to manage bookkeeping. The two I've discovered so far (and will be testing later this month) are Pilot.com (accrual basis accounting) and Bench.co (for cash basis accounting).
Shrav from Pilot.com here! Pilot can do both accrual or cash basis accounting. We do all our bookkeeping in QuickBooks, so you are never locked in.
Hundreds of startups (including 50+ Y Combinator companies) use us for their bookkeeping, including Bannerman, Scale, and OpenAI. Several of the products listed on Indiehackers actually use Pilot to do their bookkeeping.
Please don't hesitate to reach out!
Hi David,
Keep a separate bank account for your business funds. Use accounting software like Xero and get an accountant and possibly a book keeper depending on how active your accounts are.
Nice approach. I agree that business funds should be separated from personal funds. It reduces the accessibility and general urge to 'just take a little' when in need.
I use Xero and have been with them for years.
Bookkeeping is honestly pretty easy to do yourself. Just go in once a month and reconcile everything.
In Xero, you can setup automatic rules to make your life easier. And it's always a good idea to know your finances well if you are the founder.
You should still have a CPA that looks over everything in the end.
I agree. The CPA is a must to ensure compliance
I use Quickbooks. It isn't the most user-friendly and you really need to have some accounting/book keeping background. If you can afford it, there are bookeepers as a service available.
Yeah. Quickbooks seems to be a winner in the accounting software space
I usually start with a simple spreadsheet in Google Sheets, but move to Wave (or you could find something similar) once transactions increase. Really whatever works and gets you to record every transaction. It saves a lot of time in the future
I second using Wave. The receipt tracking is great and you can't beat the initial price point (free).
Interesting. I've never actually used google Sheets for anything :)
It's a great resource. I am still using Google Sheets + GApps for my bookkeeping. And it is scripted to work on its own. Scans emails for any new sign-up, payment. Mails stats every day.
Nice. I would love to see how you've set that up
Mails on Gmail can be parsed using AppScript. So every payment or signup mail is labelled accordingly and App script adds a row in the sheet. On another sheet using formulas, the dashboard is ready online. For data from the website, a crude way is to use functions like IMPORTDATA(). Tada! So everyday during the travelling time, my microservice mails me crucial numbers.
Ps. Another way could also be using IFTTT & Zapier for the row addition. :-P
That's pretty cool