Create Your Billing Statement Amazon Template for Accounting and Tax Effortlessly

Billing statement amazon template for Accounting and Tax

a key principle of running a successful business is being on top of your numbers whether you sell with Amazon FBA on eBay Etsy Shopify or anywhere else for that matter you need to be on top of your income and your expenses so that you actually understand whether your business is profitable or not so in this video to help you understand that I'm going to be running through the different tools and processes that I use and recommend all of which are suitable for small business owners that sell products online so let's start off with my first recommendation which is my free expense tracker even if you've only just decided that you want to run your own business you still need to have a system in place from Day Zero that notes any business expenses that you incur all of which need to be recorded so that your accountant is able to properly calculate your profits and how much tax you owe when you actually start trading regardless of whether you want to run your business as a sole Trader or a limited company recording every single one of your expenses is a must not only because you'll probably forget what you've spent your money on as the months pass but also because you'll save your accountant a ton of time in understanding your financials ultimately making your accounting Bill much lower than if you didn't speaking of accountants if you don't have one yet or you're not happy with the current service that you're getting check out awesome who are a digital accountancy firm that specialize in accounting for people that are looking to sell with Amazon FBA Shopify eBay and more for viewers of this channel you can get two months of free accounting and a limited company set up for you for the price of a pound just click the link in the description to take advantage of this offer whilst there are a lot of expense tracking apps and websites out there most of them do cost which might not be the sort of thing that you want to spend your money on it's such an early stage in the process but that's not going to be a problem for us because if you're watching this video now then you can make use of the expense tracker that I've put together and that I've used for months on end when I first started selling products online to download it simply visit janssensmith.com browse to my tools and resources page and then download it as mentioned the purpose of my expense tracker is to make your life and your accountant's life much easier when trying to remember all of your expenses that you and your business have made over the year every time that you incur a cost that is related to your business whether that be buying stock software marketing advertising or anything else you need to record the details of it in this tracker so that's going to be the date the payee a description of what it is that you've bought and so on of course it's also really important to record any income that your business makes but in my opinion if you're going to be running a business that sells lots and lots of items so an e-commerce one for example it's going to be much easier and quicker to use one of the more advanced tools that I'll be running through later on for that reason I'd recommend just using this expense tracker tool in the early days of running your business or if you're running one where it's going to be really easy to keep on top of how many sales you're making on a weekly basis in order to keep those accounting costs low try to ensure that you update this tracker at least once a week and then once a month or so send it over to your accountant along with your receipts and your invoices and that way they'll be able to record everything in their own files reducing your bookkeeping Bill once your business starts trading or you decide that you'd rather your accountant just do all of your bookkeeping for you you you'll want to start making use of zero and that's an accountancy software solution for small and medium-sized businesses in a nutshell the way that xero functions is that it hooks up to your bank account and your PayPal account and automatically records all of your revenue and expenses which you or your accountant will then need to categorize once you've done that though a couple of times and it's learned what expense is what it will start doing your bookkeeping automatically and all that's required from you is a quick confirmation if you're running a business that incurs lots of revenues and expenses every single month then xero is a complete no-brainer and it's going to allow you to spend more of your time on focusing on important matters like growing your business in addition to doing your bookkeeping for you xero also assists your accountant with calculating things like revenues accounting profits and taxes all of which are essential for you to know if you want to maximize your business's performance whilst xero's base package is actually pretty cheap at around 10 pounds per month lots of modern accountancy firms such as awesome they automatically provide it as part of their services so make sure that you check with your accountant if you already have it before you go ahead and enroll just like apple xero also has an app store and one app that I highly recommend that you get if you are an Amazon FBA eBay Shopify or Etsy seller is link my books and that is an app that allows you to connect xero directly to all of the platforms that you sell on which will automatically then download details of your revenues refunds transaction fees platform fees and more so for example every two weeks as an Amazon seller you'll get your funds from the sales that you've made deposited directly into your bank account if you didn't have linked my books then xero would just look at that money there and they'd see it as a single lump sum payment when the reality is that it probably represents payments from lots and lots of customers after Amazon's fees have been deducted whilst knowing the composition of a lump sum payment that might not sound like something that actually matters believe me when it comes to calculating things like whether your vat registered and how much tax you owe it is hugely important and that is exactly why out of all of the apps out there if you use xero or QuickBooks and you sell on Amazon eBay Shopify or Etsy link my books is an essential app to get especially so because it's very reasonably priced compared to its competitors and it very rarely needs any input from you it does everything automatically and the customer support that you get if you have any questions questions is fantastic just like with xero some accountancy firms such as awesome give you link my books automatically for free so again before enrolling check with your accountant to see if you already have it one important thing to note is that both xero and link my books are tools that are predominantly there to help your accountant put together financial statements and work out your revenues profits tax liability and so on on an annual basis so they're not really tools that are suitable for checking your sales and your profits on a daily basis for that I recommend shopkeeper if you are an Amazon FBA seller shopkeeper is an app for Amazon FBA sellers that syncs directly with your Amazon account and tells you what products you've sold and the profit that you've made over the previous day week or month you can also use it for monitoring your advertising costs inventory levels and more so if you sell more than one type of product on Amazon and you have trouble calculating your daily profits sign up using the link in the description try it for free for 30 days and see what you think if you're wondering what the difference is between shopkeeper and xero then the easiest way to explain it is that shopkeeper is a profits tool that is designed just for Amazon sellers and it gives you granularity over an individual product sales and profitability whereas zero is an accounting tool made for all sorts of businesses to use that allows you to see your overall sales and your overall profits from more of a bigger picture point of view so it doesn't quite offer you the granularity that a tool like shopkeeper does so if you're a new seller to Amazon eBay Etsy Shopify or just selling products online start with my expense tracker and remember to keep a record of all of your costs then once you start growing and you progress to the stage of selling or just incurring more and more costs upgrade to xero and Link My Books using my discount links below but before you go ahead and do that just remember to check if your accountant offers those tools for free just like awesome does that is it for my Roundup of accounting and bookkeeping tools if you've got any questions about anything that I've run through in this video or you have your own recommendations let me know in the comments I will see you guys next time