Accounts
This category includes the "good stuff" your business owns, like your cash, equipment, and van.
What are Assets?
This is the most basic bookkeeping task: recording every single dollar that comes in or goes out.
What is Recording Transactions?
This report tells you if you actually made money or lost money over the last month.
What is a Profit and Loss Statement (P&L)?
To keep your books clean, you should never mix your business money with this other type of money.
What is Personal Money?
To find your profit, you take your total Income and subtract these.
What are Expenses?
This category is for everything your business owes to others, like a bank loan or a credit card balance.
What are Liabilities?
You should ask for one of these every time you buy something for the business to prove the expense later.
What is a Receipt?
This report is like a "snapshot" of what your business owns and owes at this exact moment.
What is a Balance Sheet?
It’s a smart habit to put a percentage of every sale into a separate account to pay these at the end of the year.
What are Taxes?
These are your "fixed" monthly bills that stay the same even if you don't sell anything, like Rent.
What are Operating Expenses (or Overhead)?
If you take money out of the business to pay your own personal rent, it’s called an "Owner's" this.
What is a Draw (or Withdrawal)?
Using software like QuickBooks or Wave helps you avoid doing your math on this old-school office tool.
What is a Spreadsheet (or Paper Ledger)?
This is the "Top Line"—the total amount of money you collected from customers before paying any bills.
What is Revenue (or Income/Sales)?
Instead of a shoebox full of paper, the slides suggest using this type of "Cloud" storage for your receipts.
What is Digital Storage (or Hubdoc/Google Drive)?
If you sell a shirt for $20 but it cost you $10 to buy it, your Gross Profit is this much.
What is $10?
This is the money you personally put into the business to get it started.
What is an Owner’s Contribution?
The main reason to stay organized all year is to make this "season" in April much less stressful.
What is Tax Season?
This is the "Bottom Line"—the money that is actually left for you after every single bill is paid.
What is Net Profit?
If you don't want to do the math yourself, you might hire this professional to handle your daily books.
What is a Bookkeeper?
These are the costs for the actual "stuff" you sell, like the ingredients for a cake or the parts for a bike.
What is Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)?
This term refers to the "value" of the business that actually belongs to the owner after all debts are paid.
What is Equity?
This monthly task involves checking your records against your Bank Statement to make sure they match.
What is Reconciliation?
If you want to know how much cash is actually sitting in your bank account right now, you look here.
What is the Balance Sheet?
To protect your bank account, you should give your bookkeeper "this type" of access so they can see—but not spend.
What is View-Only Access?
This is the specific percentage (roughly 15%) that self-employed people have to pay for Social Security and Medicare.
What is the Self-Employment Tax?