I’ve been keeping my accounts with an excel spreadsheet for years (details blogged here). It worked for me because until these last few months, most of my sales were done in cash or with checks at shows, so I could just include a single line with a total from a show and be done. But I’ve been having more and more PayPal interactions, and it was getting harder and harder to keep track of  how much of a sale was for shipping, sales tax, and PayPal fee that I finally bit the bullet and fired up an Outright account.

Once I entered the info for my PayPal account and my business bank account, Outright imported all those transactions. Of course, I then had a heck of a lot of reconciling to do, but I bit the bullet on Sunday and JUST DID IT! And now it should be easy to keep up with, fingers crossed. State sales and use tax is due really soon and it was much easier to calculate the 6 months in Outright then the previous 6 months in my spreadsheet, so fingers crossed this solution is a keeper! I just wish I’d started sooner, but I guess I needed the motivation of an increasing number of monthly paypal payments for premium web hosting to get me off my duff!

Enough about bookeeping though – I’m much rather gaze at bookshelf p0rn! Take a look at this gorgeous library that my twitter pal Nyla Free designed:

You can read (and see lots more pix) about this incredible library transformation on her blog post. As I tweeted to her earlier,  I think what I love most is that the books aren’t rows of matching books, or have that rainbow spine thing. It looks like a place where READERS live. I, along with my hubby and boys, absolutely love reading, and yearn for the day when all my books are out and arranged so that I can easily find what I’m looking for. A room like this is in my dream house…sigh…

I’m on a computer roll, and I spent the day working on my messenger bag pattern. I think I actually see the light at the end of the tunnel on this – woot! (knocking on wood, etc…)

Well, I spent the weekend sniffling, sneezing, coughing and…doing my taxes! The first year that I actually ran Candied Fabrics as a real business, I had a real tax guy do my taxes, but when he moved out of town, I thought I’d try to do it myself, and By George, with the help of Turbo Tax Online it really isn’t that tough!

Many folks I know swear by Outright, and if I had things to do over, I’d maybe use them myself. But by the time I realized that Candied Fabrics as a business was something for the long haul, I had a system in place that was working for me, and the time it would take to do over was overwhelming, and as I’ve been trying to simplify and focus, I didn’t feel like moving to a different way of bookkeeping was a useful way to spend my time!

What I do throughout the year is I keep a spreadsheet that is basically a running total of all money coming in and going out – what’s known as cash flow! I record:

Date        Company           Item                     Amount         Tax (if any)         Category

If it’s money coming in, it’s positive…and if it’s going out, it’s negative! I try to enter expenses as they happen, because I really like to know how I’m doing money wise. I know that somewtimes I’m going to go in the negative, usually when I’m buying lots and lots of scarf blanks, but then I’ll have a show, make a bunch of money and get it back in the positive again!

The categories began as my own, trying to make sense of what I was buying. But after working through Turbo Tax and figuring out where all my expenses belong in my Schedule C, I use those categories (I know, genius, right?) When I’m entering a new type of expense and I don’t know how to categorize it, I just put a ? next to it and figure it out when doing my taxes!

The new way I’ve started looking at my data is comparing where I am year to year:

This graph tracks where I am month to month, with each year a differnt color. You can see that I spent most of 2008 in the red – this was the year that I invested in my Juki. The other neat thing is to see that I get 2 peaks, one in May, and then another at the end of the year, after the big fall shows and all the Christmas orders.

Although I’d rather not share the actual numbers here, I thought you may be interested in seeing my gradual progression, and what I’m excited about, that each year I’m doing a bit better!

My new business cards are in – and I LOVE them! PSPrint is the company I used this time. They are

• Pretty inexpensive ($38 for 250 with full color both sides including shipping) with no download fees
• I chose the slowest shipping option, they upgraded me to a faster one
• PSPrint often has sales (one of the reasons they were so cheap),
• Closely compare to MOO quality, (not QUITE as thick) but the price made the difference for me (I do like that you can have lots of different photos on the back of MOO cards, but the cost really was much higher)

Here’s a quick photo:

The file’s I sent them are pictured here

Thanks again to all the folks who chimed in with their 2 cents – I really love these, and you all helped!

Well, I had to scurry and take advantage of 60% off business card prices at PSPrint that expires on Monday. A couple of weeks ago I got some EXCELLENT advice from 18 kind readers…thank you all again!

Most of us (me included) like the informality of Saginaw better, so  I decided to go with that. I did change the kerning around the letter i to make the name more legible, as well as other small tweaks to size and spacing. I’ve also decided to make them 2-sided!

Then, when I need more business cards, I can make them feel new by putting a different image on one side, but not have to fuss with the other side (that’s the hope anyway, I’m such a tweaker that I’ll probably do it anyway!And since I was in the swing of things, I also designed a vinyl banner to hang at the top of my EZ-Up for shows, this thing is going to be 8’ wide by 1’ tall:

And another sign to cover the front of my stand I use to store packaging and have customers write checks on, about 2’ wide by 4’ tall. Only TODAY did I discover live trace and use it to trace 2 of my birdies from a picture of one of my art quilts…holey MOLEY, what I’ve been missing! All those lollipop flowers I drew by hand in Illustrator, who knew there was an easier way…NOT ME! Oh well, I know now!

The cheapest place I’ve found to print banners is Empire Banners, I’ll let you know if they’re any good!

I’m really liking these! And I REALLY like that they’re DONE! Phew!

First of all, thanks for all  the AMAZINGLY positive comments on my photography efforts of the other day. I’m pretty sure I answered each one individually, but please know that I am so happy that the pictures look great to you all, and that the palette idea works the way I want it to! I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating that by the time I’m done with a photo, I no longer know if it looks good, and external validation is needed! So, thank you! I feel validated!

And then…look what I woke up to yesterday!

Yup, my houses were featured on Design Hole! How exciting! Not only is it fun and head swelling to have some other blogger feature you, it also is marketing, something which is…work! I’ve explained to my husband how I actually HAVE to spend time reading & commenting on blogs…it’s market research and development – I’m clever, aren’t I What started as fun entertainment has now turned into part of my career as an artist! Any old who, this Design Hole mention kicked me in the pants with a reminder of my main point of this little business is to be able to financially support my artistic endeavors, and to continue to grow as an artist. So although half of me wants to dye and photograph the other 10 palettes I’m working with right now…I really NEED to make some more of these houses this summer, and let the business of Candied Fabrics take a little back seat action!