Welcome to the Hair of the Dog podcast. I'm Nicole Begley. And today we are chatting all things accounting and making that whole accounting world a little bit less scary and a little bit easier. I'm talking with Candus Kampfer from Confidence with QuickBooks, and whether you want to use QuickBooks or not, you definitely want to stick around for this conversation because it is going to be helpful no matter what you're using to manage your receipts and to manage your accounting. Even if you're one of the ones out there still using a shoebox, stay tuned.

Welcome to the Hair of the Dog podcast. If you're a pet photographer, ready to make more money and start living a life by your design, you've come to the right place. And now your host, pet photographer, travel addict, chocolate martini connoiseur, Nicole Begley.

Hey everybody, Nicole here from Hair of the Dog. Thank you so much for joining me for another podcast episode. Can you believe we have over 30 episodes already? I know I can. It's been flying by. I've been absolutely loving hosting this podcast and having all these incredible conversations with other incredible photographers and other business professionals to help you guys improve your craft and grow your business before we get started. I just wanted to share a couple of reviews that have been left recently on the podcast. This one by Royal B Photography:"Recently discovered this podcast and I'm flying through episodes. I've already shared it with my Midwest young photographers group based in the Black Hills, just Black Hills, South Dakota. I was actually there for a wedding last year and it was beautiful. Totally exceeded my expectations. I loved it there, but anyway, sorry, back to the review. And I've been shooting since I was in 4-H I've had a business on and off in the past couple of years, and these episodes really make me rethink everything and get serious about what I want my business to look like. Thank you. Royal B Photography for leaving that incredible review. I am so happy that you are finding it helpful and that you are able to start asking different questions about your business to figure out what it is the you want your business to look like and make sure the business you're creating is going to work for. I also wanted to share another review from Mara. She said, I listened to my first episode and I'm hooked. I photograph mostly high school seniors and some pets, but I found most of the information shared in the podcast to be completely helpful for all types of photography, clear, easy to understand and delivered in a positive manner. I will definitely be back for more. Thanks so much. Thank you, Mara, for listening. We're so happy to have you as one of our listeners, for sure, for the rest of you guys out there. If you are finding value in this podcast, may I please ask you to take a minute, leave a review on iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you happen to listen to these podcasts, a rating and a review would be wonderful. And I would love to share what you have to say right here on the podcast, in the future. Likewise, if you have a question that you would like to have answered on the podcast, I would love if you would go to hair of the dog academy.com forward slash ask a S K and you will be taken to a place where you can actually leave a recording of your question, and then we will play that question and I will dive into an answer for you. So I am pretty excited for this new format for some of our episodes, so that I can actually give direct feedback to you guys out there with the things that are getting in the way of your business right now, or your craft or anything else related to pet photography. Don't be shy. Go ahead. Over to hair of the dog academy.com/ask. Leave a question and I hope to review it on a future episode. All right. In the meantime, we're going to go ahead and get started with our interview with Candus. Hey, everybody, Nicole here from Hair of the Dog. And I am here with my friend Candus Kampfer from Confidence with QuickBooks, and we are going to be talking all about something that I actually kind of secretly love and believe it or not. I almost thought about becoming a CPA

For a hot minute because I'm that much of a nerd Candus, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so nice to be here.

Yeah. So, so glad to have you here. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your business and how you got started,

Loving numbers, as much as I do. You know, it's kind of funny. This is, uh, I'm not, I'm nerdy in a different way, but I didn't actually start teaching QuickBooks because I love numbers, which is interesting. We'll talk about that. So hello, I'm Candus and I love helping business owners. Just like you create confidence at tax time. And typically I do it through QuickBooks, but we're gonna talk about some other options as well today.

Perfect. Perfect. I know this is one area that a lot of photographers, they hear accounting in QuickBooks and they just completely tune out and say, ah, forget it. And then tax time comes and they show up their accountant with the box full of receipts. And they're like, ha ha ha.

Here you go. Let's do my taxes. Yeah. And there's a better way. Definitely. Yeah. So I come from a perspective of business. I'm an entrepreneur, so I actually don't have a tax professional. So if you're worried that this is going to be boring and it's going to be overwhelming and you're not going to learn anything so not true, stay tuned because we're going to help you take it step by step. Awesome. Awesome.

Awesome. So, yeah. So I guess, should we start with what the first step of like, why, why is it even important to keep track of all these numbers? Yeah.

Yeah. So we all know that taxes are the thing we have to do. And so many people dread it. The one thing I want you to consider is if you re look at that. So instead of looking at it, as I have to do taxes, looking at it as this is giving me the data, I need to make business decisions. So taxes only happen once a year. If you start getting to the point where you're tracking your numbers, you can actually start making, you can start seeing like how many left, you know, how many sessions did I have? Which one, which of my sessions, if you offer different kinds, are most people taking, where am I spending my money? How can I optimize my business numbers? Aren't just about taxes. Even though we dread them. They're really about helping you look at your business and understand what's actually happening in a very black and white way. Sometimes we dread it. But it's the one thing we know that if we figured out we could really understand our business better. Yeah,

Yeah, no, I love that for sure. Because a lot of us do offer different types of session types, whether they're smaller sessions or longer sessions, some that are focused on certain products, some that are maybe they call mini sessions that they're shorter a little bit less of a price point, but it's so important to actually know what our numbers are coming in for these to see if they're profitable. Because just because you have maybe a$4,000 sale, and then you have a mini session day where you have like five,$500 sales, depending on the time you spent on each one and what your costs are like, they could be wildly different in their actual profitability. So yeah, looking at numbers gives us just so much information in the same way. You can look at your numbers if you're tracking them and say, all right, I have this much coming in this much going out, but how can I, how can I save some money? Where am I spending my money? Can I cut some expenses here? Can I increase some profit here? And it just, it adds to your bottom line. But yeah, it's hard to do when that's in a box of receipts.

Yeah. I think often people say like we guesstimate, right? We think about this much on this session or at different businesses, you know, but in sessions for you guys specifically, you think I charged this much, I'm making this much, or these sessions, like you're saying are paying off. And as you start really looking at what it's costing you, it's also, the interesting fact is there's like, there's a cost in like what you're specifically talking about in products. There's also cost and time and learning, like, which of your products are I worked for this petroleum company years and years ago. And they would call it their bread and butter. So they would deliver big tanker loads to gas stations. And then they would also deliver like fuel to people's homes for heating and things. Right. And they had what they call their bread and butter, which was delivery. And if you can learn what, what you might consider your bread and butter, the thing that makes you the most, leverages your time, and gives you the most bang for your buck then it makes business a lot easier.

Absolutely. Yeah. I've heard that a lot from wedding photographers that they used to be wedding photographers. Now they moved into portrait photography because, you know, say you make$5,000 for a wedding. And everybody outside of the photography industry thinks they show up at noon and they shoot till eight and that's it. They just worked eight hours and it made$5,000. That's amazing. But they don't realize like there's 40 hours worth of work behind that to prep everything, to deal with the client before to edit the image, to deliver the images. So there's just so much more work there. And when they broke down per hour, what they were making on weddings versus what they would make with a portrait client that was, you know, maybe a$2,000 sale with some wall art, but it was only five to 10 hours of time. It made a drastic difference in the amount of money they were making per hour. So that's definitely another awesome number just to kind of keep track of in your business and do the math and find out. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I guess, do you want to speak to kind of like what the end result is that we want to look at? Like, I am a big believer of, we should always start with the end in mind, who is that? Jim James Covey or someone like that. One of those guys that has, you know, good quotes and smart things anyway. So we definitely want to have our intention of what we want to come out of this. So can you speak to a little bit

About that? This is like one of the number one, this is what I always start. All my trainings with. It's everything I teach is so often we think we're just going to like, go in, start just grab receipts and enter your data. Whether you're going to use Excel or numbers or whatever it is, Google sheets, like, whatever you want to use, there's different ways, right? There's a simplistic way. There's also platforms like QuickBooks, that or other things that you can use as well. But no matter what you're going to do, you want to start with your end in mind. I'm sure that you teach that with photography. It's like take thinking about, I'm not sure all of the factors that you guys really look at, but not just, I need to take this photo, but what is the overall shot? What am I looking at? What's the feeling I want to get? What is, what is the message I want to get across? We do the same thing with numbers. So if you sit down, especially if you're an artistic person, which you guys probably are grab a piece of paper and say, this is kind of what I want to know. A lot of times what I see people doing, one of the big mistakes is they just lump all their income. As we were talking about before into one category, it's income for the year it's revenue, this is how much I made. But if you could start looking at it, like, I really love to know how many, many sessions I'd really love to know all like, you know, different types of photography. You said like your products, how much did I generate from my wall art or the different things that you do. And then we'll get down to like, what does it costing you as well? But one of the big things that you want to start with is just grab a piece of paper and say, okay, I'd really like to know how much I spend in advertising. I'd really like to know how much I spend for internet and computer and all these different things. And this is the one key. A lot of people think my tax professional knows best. A bookkeeper knows best, but the truth is no one cares about your business, the way you do, and nobody knows your business the way you do. So I'm sure that Nicole, you teach there's different types of ways. You can do photography. And the same is true with tracking your numbers. Every pet photographer is going to have a slightly different business model. You're going to love doing mini sessions versus bigger sessions, or maybe you want us to do certain types of products. So when you're creating your list, don't look for somebody else to tell you what you need as much as just getting started and saying, what is it that I want to know about my business? And instead of just looking at it, as we said before, as I have to file my taxes, look at it as what is the data that I might need to make a decision that's where I was outlining and getting ideas of what you really want to see. Does that make sense?

It does. Absolutely. I can think of some of the questions that they might want to know, which is definitely what types of sessions are bringing in the most money. One of the things I teach is when you do your marketing campaign is that you kind of break down what happened afterwards. So how many new clients did you get? What, uh, what did those clients spend? What were your cost of goods sold from those sessions? So you can see how profitable that marketing campaign was. So, you know, if it was successful or because a lot of times as a pet photographer or general photographer, you're like, okay, I'm going to do this marketing thing. And it's going to fill my calendar for the year. And they don't like the, a successful marketing campaign could very well be two great clients. And it's all of these marketing campaigns together and all of the referrals and just networking and things like that, that build our business. But it's important to look back and actually look at the numbers and look at the data so that you don't make up stories in your head of assigning, Oh, well I wanted 10 and I got two. So that was a failure. When you can actually look at the numbers and say, okay, I got two, they're both a$2,000 sale. It costs me five hours and$50 do that marketing campaign. That was a success. So, yeah, so we can definitely look at ways and to look at our numbers, to find out those kinds of details, to find out how many sessions we're shooting. What's the profitability of those sessions. What are things costing us? What's our cost of goods sold all of those different questions. So yeah. Homework for you guys at home right now is to pause this and write down some of the things you want to learn from your numbers. And then Candice, is there like a way that a best practice for how you set up your numbers or do you start to set up your accounting really? Based off those questions, a hundred percent. So what most people do,

As they say, for example, with QuickBooks, it can do all these features. I'm just going to go start using it. I'm just going to go start entering everything in, but it's kind of like building a house without a blueprint. If you start just like throwing things out at your house is going to look crazy. Or if you get in your car and you just start driving somewhere, but you don't know where your destination is, it's really hard to go. Now you might say it, but I'm not sure what I need. This is we build it over time. So if, if for right now you only have like two products or services that you offer. Fine start there. It doesn't have, don't try to be, don't compare yourself to somebody who's been in business for a long time who really has all this figured out. I would say, give yourself grace and space that as you start tracking it, even it's funny, I teach this right. And I remember when I first started tracking for my recent business, I was like, what do I want? And I start chatting with my husband. He's like, isn't this what you teach? And I'm like, yeah, but I'm trying to figure it out. And so I can say that with giving you grace, that you don't have to be perfect at this. It's just getting started. It's just getting the details. And then what will happen with everything as you learn, you kind of do it. And then you look back and you go, you know what I'd really like to know. I'd really like to know what Nicole's talking about. I'd really like to know what that marketing campaign, which clients did I get. And if I did that again, and I was willing to put that five hours, I think is what you said and$50, when can I do that? Cause it gets you motivated to want to do it again next time. Cause you know, it was a success, especially if you frame it, like she's teaching you with realizing what you really, what you were capable of doing with that, with that marketing campaign. And so best practices we can provide, like an example, maybe I'll create like a little example for them of like some of the things we could kind of like go through maybe together and think of like a little bit of like, maybe there's probably different levels of people and entrepreneurs that are doing photography. So there's the beginner then there's the middle. And then there's, who's more advanced and you're your, what you're going to track is going to grow with that. And so we could create a couple little like lists of some ideas of types of things that you would track. Yeah. Definitely going to be your income. And then the next thing that we could talk about would be

If you're offering products is your cost of goods. Like, um,

Goods, people get that like, Oh my gosh, what does that mean? It's just, what does it cost you to provide the product or service that you're offering to go and you buy from, I'm sure you have recommendations on where to get their stuff done. That's part of their cost. Yeah.

I've heard it explained to as cost of goods sold or anything that if you didn't have clients, you wouldn't have an expense for, so anything that's not cost of goods sold like your fixed costs or whether you have anyone walked through the door or not, you're still going to have that expense. That's not cost of goods sold. Um, and there is, you know, I think people can get so bogged down in the nuances of, Oh my gosh, does this fall under cost of goods sold or does this fall under travel or does this fall over here? And Oh, where should I even possibly put it in my books? And I don't know what to do. So I'm just going to do nothing from my perspective of the important numbers to track in this cost of goods sold. I'm just crazy little bubble are your products. So your hard costs for your products, any shipping costs you have for those products and your packaging costs for those products really, and also labor. So if you're paying somebody to do like some editing or things like that, that would definitely be in there too. But other than that, like I wouldn't worry too much unless you're a traveling photographer that has travel. It's a regular session thing and you're staying in hotels near going on planes, but most of us are working locally and that doesn't apply to us. So those I think are the main cost of goods, things that we need to look into because as a photographer, a lot of us really get sucked into this false sense of security of, um, Oh, it's okay. You know, I'm, I'm not charging that much, but ah, gosh, who am I to charge for my work? Oh, I'd like to do this. So I shouldn't charge that much. But as I will say, until I'm blue in the face, it is so important for us to know our numbers so that we can charge appropriately so that you can have a sustainable business. Because if you're undercharging, you're going to be working so many hours and you're going to end up looking at your numbers at the end of the year. And you'll be like, Oh my God, I worked that hard for$20,000. Like what, um, you know, so if you can look at those costs of goods sold and make sure they stay under 25% per session, which a quick and dirty way, take your session total, add up those costs that I just talked about, your shipping, your product costs, any packaging costs and or any labor costs that you had, and then subtract that or divide it, I guess, to get 25%, make sure it's 25% or less gosh, such an important number to know.

Right. Cause yeah. So what happens is after you've paid for those like base things that it costs you to provide, then you can start paying for all the other things that you have over and above that. And so that's why she's recommending only having, you know, only being 25%, because then you have enough to cover all the other things that keep you in business as well. Yes.

Yeah. Like those lenses and the computers and the software. So many things absolutely. Yes. Yes. Very important. Very important guys. Yeah. Actually, let's talk about paying yourself for a minute, cause I bet you have something good to share here. And that's definitely something, I think that a lot of newer photographers struggle with is, you know, a lot of them are bootstrapping, so they're growing their business and they're putting all the profit back in the business. What's the best way. Or have you found an easy way to start to change that up to say, hold on, I'm going to start paying myself here because I think a lot of people think, Oh, well I've just have to start paying myself a full salary and that doesn't necessarily have to happen. Like at least I think you should start paying yourself a little portion of something and then increase it as you go. But I didn't know if you had any thoughts, this is the best way to do that.

That's really great. So a lot of times businesses I'm thinking about myself in this example, it's not something that I, I speak to a lot, but I know, um, it's really common to feel like there's an, that you want like a certain amount in your bank account and you don't want to take any a certain percentage out because you want to keep it there to cover or whatever. Um, but there's a lot of tip. Believe that if you take it some for yourself and you put it to the side so that you're like I'm actually getting paid. Because whenever we, whenever we try to just give, give, give, and we don't receive after a while you get burned out, we all am sure you did photography because you love artistic. You love seeing people's faces when they get your photos back, watching the people interact with their pets or depending on what type of photography you do. But there's that connection with people and you love it. But we all are in business to make money. You know, you have to make a living because you got to keep your lights on, pay your bills and buy your lenses. I actually, I have a little camera, little side note. I've actually would love to learn to do more photography. I haven't. Um, and it's always like my dream to do that, but I know that there's a cost involved and there's a cost. And to just never pay yourself, you'll you won't be able to stay in forever. And if you want this to be a long game, a long term thing, you do need to start paying yourself. Not just for nothing. I would say for more than anything to know that you can keep moving forward and it doesn't have to be a lot. So just as simple as we talked about, like in the different phases of your business, you track your numbers differently. You're also going to pay yourself different. So I think I would just say, say to yourself, what can you feel is reasonable in this moment that you could pay yourself, that you can take, that you can just start feeling like it's more of a real business. Even if it's small amount, you know, a hundred dollars a month. Like it doesn't, everybody thinks it's like all in or nothing. Just what if you just did a little bit, and then the, I would say, ask yourself, what are you going to do with that money? So it's not just about paying yourself, but like, are you celebrating your business as you go? Like, what is, what, what could you do with that money? That's different than, than what you spend out inside your business itself, as far as business expenses, like, how can you like take that money? And this may not be what other people recommend. It may not even be what you recommend, but like, how can you like do something for yourself? I would even say with that money that you paid, that's like, heck yeah, celebrating your business. Like what if you could take 50 or a hundred dollars to pay yourself and you used it to like celebrate and do something for yourself, like self care too, or buy a book you've been wanting, like something,

Something that you're also saying I'm getting somewhere with this. That absolutely part of my suggestion. No, I love that. Um, and I think that's so important and I think that's so motivating. If you can look at your business and be like, I plan to do X with my profits. So whether that's, I'm going to take my family on vacation, I'm going to get a massage once a month, once a quarter, I'm going to go out to a nice dinner. I'm definitely one of those people that I don't spend my money on clothes and shoes. I mean, I'm wearing a tee shirt. I ordered off of Etsy right now and like bird stretch pants and my purse is from target. But, um, I will drop a good amount of money on a really good dinner or a nice hotel or an experience like that where I know other people have different, um, different things that they love. So what is it that you'd love to spend money on and treat yourself? And it is 100% okay. Actually encouraged to take the profits from your business. You don't have to take all of them, but take a little tiny bit and do something for yourself as a celebration because it actually does something in your brain to cement, you know, cement what you've done and, and have you like your subconscious then look forward to doing this more. And you know, I don't know the specific details of all that, but I know that works so definitely 100%. And I always like to tell people too, because you know, there's a lot of photographers out there that are like, do I want to do this as a hobby? Or do I want to do this as a business? And there is nothing wrong with wanting to do this as a hobby. Absolutely nothing. But if you decide you want to do it as a business, then I think it's really important to make the intention that you are going to do this as a business and you are going to do this to make money. And it is okay to make money. I think a lot of people feel guilty charging because like we said before, they love what they do. So how can I charge somewhat? But I encourage you to think back to a time when you really wanted something, when you were super excited to drop a decent amount of money on something and think about like, I don't know if somebody was like, no, you can't have this. He was like, you were excited to spend the money. It's part of the exchange. Like you're not forcing anyone to spend money with you that you are saying, Hey, this is what I offer. And they're saying, Oh my gosh, that looks amazing. And you say, this is what it costs. And they say, yes, I see the value for that. Let's do this. And it's an equal exchange of energy and money and everybody is happy and you deserve to get paid. So go out there and make the money. Everyone. Perfect. Awesome. All right. I got it off my soap box here for all of those things. Oh, you might be able to speak to this Candus. So as we start to pay ourselves, do you have a way that you recommend that people plan for their income taxes? Because with the profits in your business come estimated quarterly taxes. And when you used to have a paycheck job, they took all the taxes out. So then you pay your taxes at the end of the year. And you're like, okay, whatever. I might know a little, but I might get money back when you're self employed and making money. Sometimes that can be a little bit of a shocker. So how, what's the best way to plan for that? So

This is interesting. So remember earlier I said, I'm actually not a tax professional. So from an entrepreneurial standpoint, but this is what I would say to do. One, if you start tracking your numbers, you'll be able to then go and talk high, recommend that whatever level you are in your business, that you actually invest in a good tax professional, because the trying to do it yourself, like, I mean, I teach accounting, but I don't do my own taxes. So one of the things I actually, you know, recommend, especially when you're smaller, it doesn't, you don't need to do it as often, but as you get bigger, I recommend going like quarterly and talking to your tax special about making planning. But if we're talking specific to somebody who's self employed and this kind of like your first time, you might want to start looking, I can't give tax advice. But what I would say is somebody start looking for somebody who can give you tax advice, because it's actually important. There's there are things that you can do and start looking for ways that one of the amazing things about being an entrepreneur and having your business is a lot of the things that you're doing to run your business are deductible. And so where you start with your top number of what you've made and where you end with what you've made, as far as, once you write everything off, it's very different. And so I think you should, I'm just going to pass this off to you should talk to a tax professional, but what you, what you could do is just ask them like, you know what, what's the percentile that I could put to the side. And then I talk to people about sales tax often. This is something that comes up when people do have sales tax that they have to worry about is that they take it and they put it over to savings. So typically if we have it in our checking account, we spend it like, we think it's there and usable cause we see a dollar amount. Um, but if you actually create like a secondary savings or another place to put that money, then it's a little, it'll be a lot easier. That, that is one tip that I could,

Yes, a hundred percent, especially as we start off, a lot of us start off paying sales tax quarterly. And fourth quarter is usually a pretty big quarter for our photographers. So we make all our money in October, November, early December, and then our credit card bill comes in, we pay all our lab costs. And then all of a sudden, January 20th, we've already spent our Christmas money and everything else. And it's like, Oh, now your sales tax bill is due from all those sales since October. So yeah, a hundred percent putting that off to the side. And um, and yeah, and for your income taxes, you're a hundred percent right to that. It really will depend on what your whole tax situation is. And highly recommend you guys, if you are choosing to be in business, whether you are your first year in business and you're not really making any money yet to, you know, making lots of money and having a really successful business, having a CPA on your team is an expense that is so worth it. And if you're just starting out, you can find a CPA that, you know, you're not necessarily going to have to pay the same CPA bill of someone that wants more of that handholding. Like my CPA firm, they check my books quarterly to reconcile them, make sure they're all set. I have a planning meeting in the spring. I have a planning meeting in the fall. That's I have a lot of services from them. But when I started, I just had one CPA that did my taxes at the end of the year. And I could just ask a couple of questions here and there. And that was a lot less expensive because it was a lot less time for my CPA. So it was, you know, based on their time. So you can definitely find that kind of help and think about it this way. Think about the money that you're spending for your CPA is most likely going to be saved in money that you're going to save on taxes because they know what deductions you can do. Um, they know what receipts and things like that, like look at your accounting and help you figure out what else you need to track. Things like that. And you can't pay for that peace of mind of just knowing that you're, you're following the tax code as much as you can because, uh, you know, it's probably about as thick from the floor to the ceiling of my office and we have 10 foot ceilings. If you wanted to actually go through that tax code. So having somebody on your side, that's able to navigate with you is a business expense that is worth its weight in gold.

For sure. I agree. A hundred percent. Oftentimes people like, I want to do my own taxes. I'm like, yes, I recommend you track your numbers, but you pay somebody who that is their expertise. Just like somebody, you know, they try to do their own photos and then you do the photo and then light difference. So it can be your taxes, um, tracking your numbers is the key though, to even getting that done accurately. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah.

So what are some of the different ways that people can track their numbers? I mean, from we're to say we're all going to say no to the shoe boxes and at least go to spreadsheets. All right.

So you can do it in a couple different ways. One, you could just start tracking, um, you create a spreadsheet and you could have to the left side, you could do, you could do it either way, but depends on how your mind, right. You can just do, like, this is where I went this. So you could have like date where you went, like where you spent your money and then you could have little columns to the right. So up at the top, it could say like fuel, it could say supplies. It could say, um, I don't know all the different types of expenses that your industry has. You said,

Usually we have like office expenses. I pull out software separate just because there's a lot of software costs, um, marketing, advertising, legal, most of it's actually pretty straightforward for normal business expenses. The only different one is just those cost of goods sold caveats. So we talked about before, but other than that, it's really pretty much a fairly normal business breakdown.

Great. So what you can do is if you want to go the simplest way, you're brand new, you could track all your different types. You do your date, where you spent the money. Like you went to Exxon and then to the right, you would have categories at the top and it would be fuel. And then at the very bottom, it would just total it the simplest way you could do it. Right. And then you would also have, so you could have one spreadsheet that does your total expenses, one spreadsheet that tracks all your types of sales. So you do the same, like to the left, it would be when you sold the product or service, who you sold it to you sold it to Nicole and then up to the right or whoever you are, the name of your client is. And then to the right, you could categorize it by type. So it could be mini sessions. It could be, um, what are some other types of things you have products, right? Like, so you have like the difference of things. And then what are the other kinds of sessions? What do you call the other category?

It's like a signature session or an adventure session. Like just depends on what people call them, but they usually have a longer session and a shorter session. And then sometimes with special one off.

So then you would just put that title at the very top. Okay. So the title at the very top and then to the, uh, as each row goes down, it would be that, and then you'd put it over into the category and you total it at the bottom. And that's like, as like the simplest way that you could get started with having the detail you need. And then that, and then as Nicole was discussing, you could always add some extra categories for your cost of goods that she recommended. And total those separate, you could have like little ways that you could track that you could also track. It could be great if you're getting started to actually have a spreadsheet that just tracks a few of your sales to begin with. So it would be like the customer you'd have, what was the income then? What was the different kinds of expenses in order? You could see me, but my hands are moving. You just can't really see them. And then it's like, totally, I'm very like visual. I'm a, I'm a gesture person. And then autumn. And so you could have like column by column for each of your total customers. I think that I need to create like a little example that we could like link for them somewhere. Amazing. We can definitely do that. I'm sure you're visual too. Like, you're like, I hear you, but I don't see. I'm a little visuals for you guys to like, see what we're talking about, but that would be the basic to get started would be like some Excel spreadsheet put in the totals. You're good to go. Perfect. And you can get more advanced if you want to ever learn QuickBooks, you can come find me. That's what I specialize in. And it's a software that just basically you can start billing your customers and tracking a lot more of a detailed level of like each of your different customers. If you want it to your different products and services, and you can easily pull, you just put, click a couple buttons and you get a lot of the details done for you and it can sync to your bank account.

Nice. Yes. I love the syncing so much. I have it hooked up cause I have, you know, a specific savings or checking and savings accounts for my business. And then I have specific credit cards for my business. And so whatever, anything hits any of those accounts, it just pulls right into QuickBooks. I log right in there and it's like, I, you know, itemize it to that, to that line and this line[inaudible]. And then when I go to reconcile, cause it was all pulled in. I usually just have to put in the date, the total amount and then it comes up and it's like, dude, it balances itself. It's amazing. I'm so happy for all those perfect numbers

Speak to, can I say one thing I didn't mean to cut you off? No, you're having something that's like so powerful that I want to speak to as well, which is when you're in business, if you can separate your business account, even if it's small and your personal account, then if, if nothing else, and you're just like, at the end of the year, you get, you grab your bank statements, which she was speaking to. And you're like trying to do this, go back and like, cause you're just now hearing this and you're got the whole year to try to figure out if you have a separate bank account, it just makes it so much easier because everything goes in there. Now I know that when we're small, we don't really always have the cashflow and I get that too, but do your best to have a separate business bank account and credit card, if you were going to use it and try to like, or if you have like a personal credit card, you have more than one, make one of them for business so that you can really clearly know and track for your accounting purposes, what you're doing. Even if you can't move away, right? The second from the shoe box, even though we recommend it, if you have your bank statements, it will make it easier. And if you just don't really want to do it and you want to hand it off, you can. But I recommend it's easier if you know, at least what you want to receive so that if you ever get to the point where you hire another bookkeeper or you're hiring a CPA firm, like Nicole, you still know what you want to see on your reports. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. One of the benefits too, with QuickBooks is that whenever you start working with CPA, they're all very familiar with it, QuickBooks. Um, and it's so easy. They just have like an accountant login. Cause I do the online one and they can just go into my books and clean it up. I have, um, the one girl at the office, I call her my QuickBooks fairy godmother because whenever I have a question like, ah, Kelly, can you please fix this? I don't know how to code this. And she just goes in and does her magic. And um, my books are always clean, this was not always the case. Tell you when I started working with these guys, I'm like, I need help with my QuickBooks. I don't know what happened in chart of accounts, I items for everything. And all of a sudden you have 37,000 chart of accounts and I'm like, no, this is this streamline help. Funny way. They helped me get back on track. But I want to back up for one second, um, to the spreadsheet we were talking about and having that income one, we recommend on that income one, do you have, you know, the date and the name and the sale total, would you track your sales tax on that one too? So you can keep track of your sales tax? Yeah,

Yeah. So I would break it out. So you're going to have your, your like sales. I would do like your, basically the amount that you sold, the amount of your sales tax and then the total that you, it, um, because then it'll make, you'll have like one column at the end. And then, um, you could do your spreadsheets by the month, um, depending on how large your business is. If, if you want to do it that way. And then I would have like one sheet, if you're like a master at the sheets at the very end that like takes each one and takes all these little totals and like adds them together. So you have like a final one number at the end, but definitely sales tax is like the number one thing that you don't, you know, we never want to mess with taxes too much cause you get the penalties. So really knowing your sales tax, I'd highly recommend it. And one thing I wanted to speak to is typically you've got to file your taxes quarterly, but if you could start doing like installments monthly so that it's not that big thing at the end of the year that you owe. So like at each of the end of every month, you just make like a prepayment. And then at the end of the quarter, you've already made two prepayments. You just have that third month and then you're just adding the difference in verifying that you've added everything.

And if you're filing quarterly, you can do prepayments. Yeah, you do. Prepayments tomorrow night.

Oh, so much at the end and your CPA.

Yeah. We'll be able to help you with that. Awesome. No, that's good to know the other things, if I was working on that spreadsheet too, that I would put over there that wouldn't necessarily be for accounting purposes or tax purposes, but would be for my business health accounting, is I would add that cost of goods sold column to track it there. So you can see right on that one spreadsheet, what session types brought in what total, what their sales tax is and what your cost of goods sold was. And maybe even pull out like another column of your, um, net profit from that session. You know, you wouldn't use those costs of goods sold numbers or,

Or that net profit column anywhere in your actual true accounting,

But it would be, those would be good numbers to know. So you can kind of keep track of what session types are the most profitable and, um, you know, and just making sure that the, you will have a finger on the pulse of your business. One thing I wanted to speak to you real quick about

Sales tax specifically is sales tax is not technically income to you as a business. What it is is you're collecting it just a little side, note, something I like to teach you like your income that you charged. Let's just say for simplistic, simplistic math, it's a hundred dollars. Um, and then you have your sales tax at 10%, 7%, like whatever your sales tax is, the hundred dollars is your income. But the percentage of sales tax you collected is not actually your income it's in accounting terms called the liability. So you're just collecting it for the state that you're in and then you're providing it to them. So technically it's not income to sales tax. I just want to make sure you speak to that. So it doesn't, it can be, but you can feel that as the total.

Yes, yeah. A hundred percent. Um, one of the other things about sales tax too, and this will require checking with your CPA or checking with your state department of revenue, but you want to make sure as a photographer, you are very clear on what is taxable and what isn't, because every state's a little bit different and more and more States are making the service of the session fee taxable, um, digital delivery, taxable, uh, digital files. You know, obviously the products have always been pretty, pretty widely taxable. Um, but it's definitely important to keep an eye on that. And once you find out, it's also important to make sure you read those notices. You get from the state, or again, have a CPA that keeps track of that for you, because they're always updating those. And they're often adding rarely are they taking away things that are taxable for sales tax, but they are often adding new things that are taxable. And the whole digital commodity world is a little like the wild wild West that it's changing all of the time. So it's very important to be up to speed on that because you don't want to get in a situation where you have not been collecting sales tax on something that you should have been. And then you're hit with a whole bunch of fees and penalties. What I'd love to share is

Maybe after we've talked sales tax, we've talked numbers and we talked CPA that you're like, Oh my gosh, totally checked out. You told me it's going to be easy. And now I'm like so overwhelmed. I want you to take a step back and say, I've got this. I can handle this. I know it's an important part of being a true business owner. Or even if you're doing it as a hobby, you can, you're still filing your taxes and realize that there's a process. Just be kind to yourself, be gentle, give yourself grace, but just know that these are things as a business to be aware of, but that you'll get it. I just, you know, I, so often I see people get overwhelmed and I'm like, it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to. I mean, so just kind of like take what we said and start kind of listen to it, do the homework that Nicole gave you as we went, looking at your list and just take it step by step. And we'll give you some examples. Cause I think at the end, some examples they'll realize it doesn't have to be so yes.

Yeah, absolutely. It can be so simple and easy guys. The key is just to track it on a computer somewhere and, and really the most important pieces to prepare for tax season is just your income and your expenses. The other stuff that we're looking at and figuring out what you want to learn from your business is gravy. So as long as you're really tracking those two numbers, you should be in a better position to prepare for taxes and have a lot less wine and crying than you would if you have a shoe box full of receipts. So we will definitely link up, um, those and I'll actually link up my, um, I have my profit loss statements from my business, my very first year in business and then my first six figure year, uh, in my photography business. So if you guys wanted to download those and see just kind of where I spent my money, um, how I tracked it, like what categories I used, you're welcome to do that. But again, if you have different things you want to track based on what you want to learn, how I do it, it's not the only way to do it. So you can check that out. I'm at the show notes, page, hair of the dog academy.com/ 31, just the numbers three one. And you will be able to see that there Candus, this has been so good. Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat. All things, accounting and numbers, even some taxes with us really appreciate it. Can you let everybody know where to find you out there on the interwebs I'm Candus Kampfer everywhere? So I have a YouTube channel where I give tips and tricks that you can check out. U m, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook and I will be doing some workshops if you'd like to come and see like how QuickBooks works a nd some of the things that I teach, y ou can always join me on a live t [email protected] slash training and see what w e s ee, join us for the next live class that we have going on. Perfect. Awesome. And then how do you spell your name? Just for those of us that are listening out there? It's C a N D U S and then K a M as in Mary P as in Paul, F as in Frank, E R can you tell, I've done that a few times. J ust a f ew. I'll also give it to Nicole so you can find me, but yeah, even if you misspell it, you're probably g onna find me c ause there's not too many Candus Candus i n QuickBooks. I bet you'll come up. Perfect. And we'll also link to her links on the show notes page. So you can just remember hair of the dog academy.com/ 31 and find her on all the links there. So thanks again, Candus, for being here with us and thanks everybody for following along. And hopefully you are not too overwhelmed and you feel like you are ready to take on some new accounting tasks for your business. We'll talk to you. Hey, pet photographers. Are you struggling to bring your vision to life? Do you long for creating a style that is true to you? Are you ready to leave the fads and trends behind and learn how to create a style that is uniquely yours so that your work can stand apart here at hair of the dog, we are hosting a free five day unleash your style challenge to help you do just that registration is open now. So go to www.hairofthedogacademy.com forward slash unleash to save your seat. We can't wait to see what you create.