Tidy Books featured on Shootproof

It was such an honor to be featured on Shootproof at the beginning of 2020. I heard from a ton of photographers who really resonated with it.

Check it out here for tips that speak to the unique challenges of photographers.

12 Signs Your Bookkeeping System Needs a Makeover

Whether you’ve been in business for 15 years or you’ve just started, consider taking a fresh look at how you are handling your finances. If this list describes you, it might be time to try something different:

1. You procrastinate or freeze every time you think about numbers

2. You have a basic system in place but you’re never sure if you’re doing it right

3. You’re playing “whack-a-mole” with issues that come up but don’t have a grasp on your finances as a whole

4. You spend A LOT of time troubleshooting and researching your current system

5. You’re pretty sure you’ve missed out on tax deductions this year

6. You can’t tell how much you’ve paid yourself this year

7. You spend a lot of time on manual tasks that could be automated

8. You use a few different softwares but don’t know how to connect them all (like 17hats, Honeybooks, Shootproof, Acuity, etc.)

9. You are mixing business and personal money

10. You make a lot of money but can’t figure out where it went

11. You wish you had a big picture of money coming in and out of the business

12. Thinking about your finances keeps you up at night

Maybe you can relate to some or all of these things. So what’s next? First, try your best to work with your current system so that you can really evaluate where you need the most help. Start with making sure you’re doing these essential tasks. 

Talking with a bookkeeping professional is another great move. They can help you get back on track and give you tips for making sure your books are accurate and up-to-date.

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Tanya is the owner of Tidy Books - a bookkeeping firm that works exclusively with photographers and freelancers. She “gets” photographers and loves to support them with their finances so they can focus on their strengths and grow their business. She specializes in helping to maximize Quickbooks and getting the bookkeeping weight off of the shoulders of business owners.

8 Essential Bookkeeping Tasks for Your Photography Business

The other day I was so overwhelmed with the amount of emails and texts I needed to send out. Instead of letting random texts here and there take over my day, I made a list of ALL the emails and texts I needed to get out. They were no longer hanging over my head. That afternoon I sat down and conquered all of them at the same time. 

Maybe your bookkeeping has taken an absolute back seat this year, but now it’s really stressing you out. 

Don’t panic. What I just described is a simple time management tip that I think is the key to catching up with your bookkeeping: Batch your tasks together. Write down a list of the items you need to tackle and then block out a time to do it. Discipline yourself to tackle one item after another, and you’ll be much less overwhelmed.

Here are some tasks you could batch together. These are all essential tasks to keep your business finances in order:

1. Connecting or re-connecting your banks in Quickbooks Online.

2. Collecting bank statements for the year so you can reconcile.

3. Gathering all of your receipts for the year (use Receipt Bank, Shoeboxed or Hubdoc to make this easy!)

4. Categorizing your income and expenses.

5. Making a list of things you bought with personal money instead of through your business bank account to make sure you get the tax deductions.

6. Requesting W-9’s from contractors. You’ll need these for 1099’s and you’ll be ahead of the game if you do it now.

7. Troubleshooting those issues in Quickbooks or 17hats or whatever it is that you just can’t figure out

8. Researching what it would take to delegate this out next year!

Hopefully this helps you get the ball rolling on catching-up and even helps you get ahead this year.

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Tanya is the owner of Tidy Books - a bookkeeping firm that works exclusively with photographers. She “gets” photographers and loves to support them with their finances so they can focus on their strengths and grow their business. She specializes in helping photographers maximize Quickbooks and/or take the bookkeeping weight off of their shoulders. 

Quickbooks Support for Photographers

Tidy Books is so excited to launch two new packages just for Quickbooks users. Whether you’ve been using Quickbooks for awhile or you haven’t even signed up yet, we can help.

QBO Makeover

If you’ve been using Quickbooks but have little or no idea how to use it, this is for you. Or maybe you’re just not confident that you’re using it correctly. Here’s what’s included:

• Full QBO review to identify issues

• Review and clean up chart of accounts with our photography specific COA

• Review and clean up basic problem areas

• Import current calendar year of transactions if needed

• Custom Reports set-up

• Workflow recommendations

• Short recap and launch video

• One hour follow-up meeting within one month of setup

QBO Kickstart

If you’ve been thinking of using Quickbooks to get organized and automated this is for you. Here’s what’s included:

• Access our wholesale pricing for QBO

• Set up chart of accounts with our photography specific COA

• Help connect bank feeds and set beginning balances on all accounts

• Connect to other software (like 17hats, Acuity, Dubsado, etc)

• Import current calendar year of transactions if needed

• Custom Reports set-up

• Workflow recommendations

• Short recap and launch video

• One hour follow-up meeting within one month of setup

If you’d like to learn more, you can contact Tanya at Tidy Books here.

What Exactly Will a Bookkeeper Do When I Hire Them?

The question I get asked most often is 'How exactly does it work when I hire a bookkeeper?' Here's the scoop on what it looks like to hire a bookkeeper at Tidy Books. 

A good bookkeeper will have two roles

1) On the basic level, we make sure that all of your records are 100% accurate and up-to date. We will make sure every expense and all income is tracked. Everything will be ready to go for your CPA at tax time. 

2) On a higher level, our role is to take that data and present it to you in a relevant way. At Tidy Books, that looks like monthly video meetings where we present big picture reports. You can be as hands off as you want to be, but still know exactly where your business stands at any time. This is our clients’ favorite part! Most people want nothing to do with the details of the numbers. But they love to see how much money they’ve made (and get to keep)! 

The every day details:

On a practical level, we use Quickbooks to track all income and expenses. You will connect your bank account to Quickbooks, which automatically downloads your daily transactions.  We take care of categorizing those to the correct account (i.e. equipment, office supplies, etc) and reconcile monthly to your bank statement to make sure nothing has been overlooked. We communicate very closely to make sure everything is being tracked correctly. 

We can also manage receipts using a program called Hubdoc that is pretty awesome. You email receipts directly to the program and then we take care of attaching them directly in Quickbooks - it keeps things really clean in case of an audit.

Still have questions? Here are a few other commonly asked questions that might help.