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It's never too early to start thinking about how to budget for your business. Having the proper tools and strategies in place from the start will help you stay profitable and succeed faster.
Starting a business is tough!
Starting a business is tough. There are lots of expenses, and it's really important that you track these expenses so that you can really get a handle on how much you're spending and investing in your business so that you can create a profit and be successful moving forward. We're gonna talk a little bit about budgeting. So the first thing I always tell my students is, do whatever you need to do to get yourself a separate business checking account. And that was so instrumental for me when I started in order to keep track of my expenses. Once I was able to have a separate account, and I was able to invest my money in my voiceover business from a separate account, it was so much easier to keep track of things. I did start off and used money from my personal account to purchase my microphone, to purchase all of the initial equipment to purchase my, you know, demo, to purchase my coaching. It was a nightmare during tax season.
If you can create and have a separate account with your bank, that will be so much easier when tax time comes around, and that way all of your income can come into that account. Anything that you purchase can come out of that account. And also, I recommend if you can, get yourself a business credit card as well. I continually keep track of my expenses incoming, outgoing through my business bank account. And I also have a business savings account as well. And I make purchases with my business credit card, and I only have one. Makes it simple so that I can purchase, I can keep track of all those purchases at the end in my accounting software.
Not only have a separate account, uh, for each of your businesses or separate accounts for your business, but also have an accounting system where you keep track of it. And that could be, you could start off very simply with an Excel spreadsheet. I think I started with that very, very much in the beginning because I was still working full-time, and I didn't have a ton of expenses. I didn't have a ton of jobs coming in. While my business was simpler, I was able to put that all into an Excel spreadsheet. And then there's also Microsoft money. And then I started using, uh, QuickBooks because I had that on my desktop. And ultimately I am now, I've evolved to QuickBooks Online. My QuickBooks Online is able to have all of my accounts coming in, my incoming bank accounts, uh, in terms of where income will be coming in, through my business account, through my PayPal account, through Venmo. And that can all be business-related incoming revenue. And then also it can keep a track of my credit card that is paying for expenses as well as my bank account.
Once you have separate, separate accounts, and you have an accounting software -- and by the way, I also have an app, which I think is super useful, which I literally just downloaded, uh, this year, called Rocket Money. And Rocket Money really has -- takes a look at all of your accounts. You can specify all of your business accounts. It takes a look at all of the money that's coming in, going out, and it sets up a calendar and a budget for you so that you can kind of track what's happening. And one thing that it's really helped me a lot with is monthly subscriptions. And I find that, you know, over the years, everything has become subscription-based, especially, let's say, cable, uh, network television, Netflix, all of those things. Um, you know, my, uh, Amazon subscription, all different types of subscriptions that I use to conduct my business.
Sometimes they get out of control. And so if you wanna kind of rein yourself back in on those subscriptions and find out where you're spending money on a monthly basis, uh, Rocket Money is a great way to do that. And it just pulls in all of it automatically. I was able to do that in about 15 minutes, and I only had to add in a few other accounts that it missed. That's a great way to kind of keep your eye every day on what's coming in, what's going out. And then it will help you to track anything that might be erroneous or an account that you might have forgotten about.
So remember guys, this isn't just a one-time thing. Don't just set up your accounting software and then never look at it again. It really is something that is useful if you look at it on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. Again, I've said this multiple times. I actually have an a, an accountant that I have on retainer, that helps me to do all of my business accounting, uh, for the month. And also I'm going to tell you that generating reports, however you can look at it in an easy fashion that isn't complicated, where you have to go in and spend a lot of time in your accounting software, generate that, you know, generate those reports that you can look at on a consistent basis so you can really get a hold on where your expenses are. Look at it consistently, and stay on top of your budget.
Thanks for reading!
Keep on rocking your business like a #VOBOSS
About Anne Ganguzza
Recipient of multiple Voice Arts Awards for Outstanding Narration Demo - Anne Ganguzza is California-based Voice Over Coach and award-winning Director & Producer specializing in target-marketed voiceover Demo Production. Anne's production team creates SOVAS-nominated demos across several genres, including Commercial, Corporate Narration, and eLearning, and her VO BOSS podcast is the winner of SOVAS Outstanding Podcast in 2022.