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Book Keeping Management

Lesson 18 from: FAST CLASS: How to Start a Photography Business

Pye Jirsa

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Lesson Info

18. Book Keeping Management

Lesson Info

Book Keeping Management

We're looking at financial statements. And absolutely, yearly, obviously, you wanna look at financial statements. But this is your power. So on the one side, we had data in terms of where our time is going, and on the flip side, we have data in terms of what cash is coming into the studio. That's all the information that you need to start making good decisions in your business. And every decision that we make, is driven based on that. Here's the problem that every one of you is gonna have. You hire your first assistant, or a studio manager, or a receptionist, or something. And that person is simply not quite doing what you expected of them, okay? Now I know, some of you might think, Oh, but I wanna run this on my own. I know. You wanna run this on your own, but you're still at some point in your career, maybe a year down the road, you're gonna go, I need a studio manager. I need somebody to help me with the admin work of signing contracts and bringing clients in. I need that help so I ...

can focus on the bigger sides of my business. You're still a lone wolf in it, you just got one person helping you. If you do not keep track of the time that that person is putting in. If you do not keep track of how much revenue they're bringing in, booking and so forth, and you decide three months down the road that you'd like to terminate them, if it's without cause. Which if you don't have any sort of reports, it will be without cause, they can come back after you. Do they have a case? Who knows, that's for the lawyer to decide that they hire. But if you have time reports, and revenue numbers, and you came back and you said, "Look, you've been working 20 hours a week, "but we've discussed it on a weekly basis. "I don't see the effectiveness of that time "because revenue numbers have actually been going down "a little bit. And I've had to help out in a lot of these different areas." Then you've got cause for termination. So that kind of makes sense? Now, this is saying, like once you have your own employee, but think about your own time, and where do you put your time. What if you dumped 200 hours into family portraiture, and it made 10% of what your weddings do. But you're like, I really like family portraiture. I'm gonna keep pushing that. And your product is simply not set up. If you don't review the financial statements, and you see that okay, let's look at the financial statements. $20,000 this month came from weddings. $2,000 dollars came from families. But 80% of my time went into the family side. This is the importance of that reporting. Sitting down, and looking, and analyzing. So what we wanna do is set up QuickBooks, or FreshBooks. We wanna track all of your expenses, and we're gonna track it via job codes. That means that, just like your time, your expenses should be tracked to the client, or the project that you're working on. Makes sense? Because I want you to be able to come and tell me, a year from now, what your... This is what I'm gonna ask you. What is your general profitability on a wedding? What is your general profitability on a pet shoot? What is your general profitability on a family portrait session? How about a maternity session? And I want you to be able to come back to me in a year, and say, "60%, 30%, 50%, 20%". Now from a business standpoint, as soon as you've said those words, where do you focus? On the 60%? Yeah. So that's what this is gonna give you. We are gonna set up our time reporting. So again, time and scheduling and all that, was back in the previous stuff. So if we're lost in terms of setting up vision, time, scheduling, all that kind of stuff, go back and watch the previous content, refresh yourself. And then find a solid local CPA. This is what you should look and ask your CPA to do. Obviously look at reviews to find someone good. Do I want any of you to do your own bookkeeping? Ask me, if me, Justin or Chris have ever done our own bookkeeping. No, like it's a drain on time, and that's one of those things that you can quickly get off your plate, by simply asking your CPA. So you should be looking to a CPA to do, help you set up a system of easy bookkeeping, of tracking expenses, of reporting, paying yourself out, and doing your taxes. That's what a CPA will do. Most people think it's just doing your taxes. No, they should help you set up everything. And a lot of them will offer service where, if you pay them a thousand bucks a quarter, you just simply send them your receipts. And they'll do it all for you. Who in their right minds would not give up a little bit of money to have that off your plates? You're talking about three public accountants who never did their own accounting. Like, we don't like it. And we're telling you guys to do the same thing. Like there's no reason for you to be lost in... Again, another, why would you set up and program, and code, and design, and do whatever you gotta do for your own website, when you have someone... there's just bigger fish to fry.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Experience Pricing Example
Workbook (ods)
Workbook (xlsx)
Workbook (pdf)

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