“CFO” – Here is a general definition of a CFO or Chief Financial Operator, another hat I wear – the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) provides both operational and programmatic support to the organization. The CFO supervises the finance unit and is the chief financial spokesperson for the organization. The CFO assists on all strategic and tactical matters as they relate to budget management, cost benefit analysis, forecasting needs and the securing of new funding.
When my hubby said to me last month it was time to get all my tax records together I froze. I am by nature extremely organized but still dreaded this. And worse was I knew it was coming, and I knew it was coming for a long time. I had all my receipts in one place and had even kept records in my ledger book, but there was a whole lot to gather up from credit card records and online in my email receipts.
BTW – Here is a picture of some beautiful English Multi’s sea glass, just because…
It didn’t take me long, a few hours maybe. I had kept receipts of all the things I’d purchased throughout the year and records of all sales and postage costs and donations. One thing I hadn’t kept a very good record of was milage to and from craft fairs and craft fair fees. Luckily I was able to easily find this information too. But, I wished I had done what my husband suggested at the beginning of last year and put everything on an Excel spreadsheet.
So, I promised myself I would put all my expenses for 2014 on a spreadsheet BEFORE it started to get out of hand. Well, it just so happens that a few days ago I felt I needed a break from sea glass (yes, that happens occasionally). I was also tired of looking at the stack of receipts and paperwork and said now is the time. I spent less than 40 minutes setting up my spread sheets and inputting all my receipts.
It’s very easy to set up an Excel spread sheet. You can create a spread sheet for whatever expenses you want, and break them down into as much detail as you want. This is an example of the spread sheets I created – “sales” “supplies” “craft fair fees” “postage” “taxes”. On each of these spread sheets I can further break down amounts. Under “sales” my break down is “Paid to me” “Fee” “Sold Via”. I added “sold via” because some of my sales are paid thru Etsy, some through Paypal, some are direct like craft fairs and direct sales and some through consignment shops. I also added “fee” to this breakdown because Etsy and PayPal each charge me a fee.
On my “craft fair fees” is also a column for milage. Just this morning as I paid entry fees for two craft fairs I posted the amounts on my new spread sheet.
My job as “CFO” just got infinitely easier!
