038. 6 Free Bookkeeping Resources for Boutique Owners

You know you should be doing something with your numbers, but you just have no idea where to start. So you keep pushing it down your to-do list, telling yourself you'll figure it out later, telling yourself you were never a numbers person anyway, and every time tax season rolls around, that little pit shows up in your stomach because you know you're about to scramble all over again. Here's what I want you to hear today. You do not have to figure this out from scratch, and you do not have to figure it out alone.

There is already a free tool out there for you wherever you happen to be stuck. And today I'm going to walk you through six of them in the exact order you'd actually use them. Let's dive in. Hey there, and welcome to the Boutique Bookkeeper Show, where we take the mystery out of your money and make your numbers make sense.

I'm Megan, virtual bookkeeper and bookkeeping coach, and I love helping female boutique owners just like you finally feel confident about the financial side of your business. If you're tired of feeling anxious every time you have to open QuickBooks, or if you're making sales but constantly left wondering, where did all that money go? You're in the right place. We'll cover all things bookkeeping and taxes, all in plain English, so you can be less intimidated by the numbers and finally start to use them to help you grow a profitable boutique.

So if you're ready to stop avoiding this whole numbers thing and start keeping more of the money you make? Grab your coffee and your calculator and let's dive in. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Boutique Bookkeeper Show. I'm Megan and today we're going to be talking about my favorite free resources to help you get a handle on your boutique bookkeeping.

So here's the thing I really want you to understand before we get into these. Most boutique owners don't avoid their bookkeeping because they're lazy. I truly believe that. You're running a whole business.

You're buying inventory, you're packing orders, posting on social media, you're answering customer DMs at nine o'clock at night. You avoid the bookkeeping because nobody ever handed you a roadmap. Nobody sat you down and said, here, start here, then do this next. So that's kind of what today is going to be.

It's going to be a roadmap. I'm going to show you through six free resources and I'm going to give them to you in the order you'd actually use them as you build this out. You do not have to go grab all of them today. In fact, I don't recommend that you do.

You just need to know which one matches where you are right now. So resource number one, the boutique bookkeeping guide. So I'm starting with this one because it's truly the best place to begin. If you're sitting there thinking, I don't even know what I don't know.

And that's such a common feeling and there's no shame in it because nobody is born knowing this stuff. So this guide is a free PDF where I answer 10 of the most common bookkeeping questions I either get myself or I see posted in Facebook groups. Things like, what even is bookkeeping? Is it different from accounting?

What's a profit and loss report? How often do I need to update my books? Should I connect my Shopify to QuickBooks? Spoiler alert, I have some thoughts on that one.

And my personal favorite, why does my profit and loss say I making money but my bank account says I broke So even if you at the very beginning and you just need someone to answer the basic questions in plain English without making you feel silly for asking this is your starting point. Start here and everything else we talk through today is going to make a little more sense. So if this is the resource that you need right now, you can go ahead and sign up for your free copy at findingfreedomfinancial.

com slash guide. and don't worry, don't feel like you need to write down all of these websites. I'm going to make sure I link all of these in the show notes below. So if you're doing something where you can't write them down or go and grab it right now, just feel free to come back to the show notes and grab the links there.

All right, resource number two, the tax deduction guide. So taxes are probably one of the very first money things that boutique owners start to worry about. You start making sales and somewhere in the back of your mind, there's this voice going like, am I going to owe a bunch in taxes at the end of the year? And what can I actually write off?

And that second question is a big one because a tax deduction, which is just a business expense that lowers the amount of income you get taxed on, those only help if you actually track them during the year. You can't write off things what you don't keep track of. So this guide walks you through the common deduction categories specific to retail and boutique businesses. Things like advertising, shipping and packaging, business meals, your software subscription, all of it.

And the whole point is that once you see what counts, you know what you need to keep track of all year round. No more getting to April and trying to remember what you bought a year ago last February. Now, one quick thing I always say, this guide is a great starting point, but it's not all-inclusive, and your business might have deductions that are specific to you. So please, I always recommend that you work with a tax professional to make sure you're getting everything you're entitled to.

This guide just makes sure that you're not flying completely blind. So you can go ahead and grab your copy at findingfreedomfinancial.com slash deductions. All right, resource number three, the five mistakes guide.

So once you know what you should be tracking, the very next fear that shows up is, okay, but what if I'm doing it wrong? And that's a totally fair, uh, fair fear, because there are a handful of mistakes that I see boutique owners make over and over. And honestly, some bookkeepers I see making these mistakes too. So I put together a guide that walks through five of the most common ones.

So I'm talking things like recording the sales tax you collect from your customers as income. It's not your income. You're just holding onto that money for the state. It's the state's income.

Or I talk about expensing your inventory the moment you buy it, when instead it should be expensed when you sell it. Or maybe taking that big Shopify deposit that hits your bank account and calling the whole thing sales when really it includes a whole bunch of things that should be recorded separately. So why does this matter so much? Because these mistakes compound.

One little wrong habit in January turns into a giant mess by December, and it so much cheaper and so much less stressful to do it right the first time than it is to pay someone like me to come clean it all up for you later So this guide helps you avoid the mess before it even starts And you can grab your copy of this guide at findingfreedomfinancial slash mistakes All right resource number four the chart of accounts template. So at this point, you know what you need to track, you know what mistakes to avoid.

The next thing you need is a place to actually put all of it. and that's where your chart of accounts comes in. So your chart of accounts is just a fancy bookkeeping term for the organized list of buckets that all of your money gets sorted into. Every sale, every expense, every inventory purchase, it all gets dropped into a certain category.

And those categories are the foundation for everything else. These accounts are what your financial reports get built from. So I created a chart of accounts template that's already set up specifically for boutique and retail businesses. You don't have to build it from scratch and wonder if you're missing something.

And here's the part where I love and other people love, when you're ready to move into QuickBooks Online, you can actually upload this template directly into your account. It comes with a short walkthrough video showing you how to customize it for your business first and then get it loaded in. So this is the one I'd grab when you're getting ready to set up QuickBooks and you want that solid foundation from day one. So to get this, go to findingfreedomfinancial.

com slash COA-template and you can download your copy. All right, resource number five, the Make Your Money Make Sense Masterclass. So at this point, you're tracking your expenses. You're avoiding the big mistakes.

You've got all of your buckets set up in your chart of accounts. And the next thing is learning to actually read what all of this is telling you. because the whole point of bookkeeping isn't just to do it, right? It's to be able to look at your numbers and understand what's going on in your business.

So I've put together a free masterclass called Make Your Money Make Sense. It's about an hour long, and in it, I walk through the three main financial reports that you'll be working with. Your income statement, also known as your profit and loss, which just shows your income and expenses over a period of time. your balance sheet, which shows you what you own and what you owe, and your statement of cash flows, which shows how the cash is actually moving through your business.

After that, I also reverse engineer the common mistakes that keep those reports from being accurate, and I show you the simple routine that you can set up to stay caught up all year long. Because what's the point of doing your bookkeeping if the numbers aren't accurate, right? So if you're the kind of person who just wants to sit down and get the full picture in one sitting, this is the resource that you should go check out first. You can register for it at findingfreedomfinancial.

com slash masterclass. All right, the last one, resource number six is the Profit First Template. So like I said, this is the last free resource that I'm going to be covering today, but it is truly one of my favorites because this is where your numbers start actually working for you So if you're not already familiar with this the profit first method is based on a book by Mike Michalowicz And the whole idea is that you take every deposit that comes into your bank account and you divide it up into separate buckets It almost like you very loosely budgeting So you have a bucket for your inventory, a bucket where you save for taxes, a bucket to actually pay yourself, and so on.

So instead of letting all of your money sit in one account where it feels like you have plenty and suddenly you don't, you can see how all of those dollars are already spoken for or allocated ahead of time. And here's how it connects to everything else we just talked about. Once you can read your financial reports from the masterclass, you can use those actual numbers to figure out your starting percentages. So how much of every deposit that you get, how much should be allocated or transferred to each of those other buckets based on what your business is really doing.

And then the template that I provide for you, it does all the math for you. So you plug in your percentages. It tells you exactly how much to move into each account every single week. And it comes with the printed instructions and a walkthrough video as well.

So this is the resource that kind of takes you from, I make sales, but I have no idea where it all goes, to actually feeling like you have a handle on your cash flow. So if this is the step that you are at in your business, you can go ahead and grab that template at findingfreedomfinancial.com slash profit-first-template. And again, all of these links that I have been talking about today are going to be available in the show notes.

So that's six free resources. And I want to say this really clearly, you do not need to go download all six of these today and try to do everything at once, okay? That's the fastest way to get overwhelmed and slam the laptop shut, okay? We've all done it.

But instead, I want you to pick the one that matches where you're stuck right now. If you're at the very beginning and don't know where to start, grab the boutique bookkeeping guide. If taxes are the thing keeping you up at night, grab the deduction guide. If you're worried you're already doing something wrong, grab the five mistakes guide.

And if you're about to set up QuickBooks, grab the chart of accounts template. And if you just want to start understanding the whole picture of everything, go register for the masterclass. And if your cashflow feels like a mystery, grab the profit first template. All right, just pick one, take that one step today.

Progress beats perfect every single time. And any one of these will help move you and your business forward. But that's all that I have for you today, be sure to tune in next week for another episode. I'll see you there.

Hey there, and thanks for hanging out with me today. I hope that I shared something that helped you feel just a little bit more confident in understanding all the numbers in your boutique business. If you found this helpful, don't forget to go and leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. That's the best way for other boutique owners just like you to find this podcast so I can help them feel just a little bit more confident in their numbers as well.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, hop on over to Instagram and send me a DM at findingfreedomfinancial. I'll be back again real soon, but in the meantime, go implement or take action on something you learned today. I promise your future self will thank you.