Introduction

Bleurgh, Yuck, No! Some of the many reactions we get when we talk about finances with traders.

We'll kind of let you in on a little secret though, it's kind of totally OK to ignore the bulk of your financial issues when you're a one-man street food operation. Don't tell your accountant that, or anyone who you know who works in finances but it's a simple equation.

<aside> 📈 Food Sales = Income

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<aside> 📉 Ingredients + Making Food Costs (Staff / Equipment / Petrol) = Costs

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<aside> 💷 Income - Costs = Profit

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If you're a sole trader you just need to record all your income and all your outgoings and then you can calculate your profit at the end of the year and that's what you put in your self-assessment tax return.

But as you grow, you need to get more and more legit. Otherwise you'll start losing money and not knowing how!

<aside> 🔥 GET AN ACCOUNTANT

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Recording Your Sales

We've seen it all, from people doing a tally system and then guessing the amount they sold each portion for, to a forensic level of detail. In increasing levels of complexity this is basically what traders go through.

  1. Adding up how much you spent, and how much you took for a day at the market, if it was a profit then 👍
  2. Recording multiple days of sales and costs in a spreadsheet, if it's a profit then 👍
  3. Recording all income and expenditure in a spreadsheet, if at the end of the month it's a profit then 👍
  4. Using your bank statement to go through and tally up all your expense to make sure they are correct, if it's not too much then 👍
  5. Using book-keeping software to connect to your bank account to reconcile all incoming and outgoing transactions from your bank account and categorise them to different costs, if it's a profit then 👍
  6. Going cashless as a business so all incoming and outgoings are solely on the bank account so you don't need to worry about missing income.
  7. 👍

<aside> ❎ Get Xero, get it now, learn how to use it, it'll save you so much time and stress.

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Should I take card payments?