So one of your key responsibilities as a business owner is keeping track of your accounts.
Now, if you've never done anything like this before, please don't worry, because the introductory
tips that I'm about to give you in this lecture should get you off to a fantastic start.
Now, any business, whatever size, will have two main categories the orders and your expenses.
So let's start off by talking about orders.
Well, as you can see here, Shopify makes this unbelievably simple for us because all of our orders
are automatically listed on our orders page.
You're also going to find exactly the same information within your payment provider.
And when the payout gets made to your bank account, it is also going to be recorded there.
So in short, with you basically doing nothing at all, all of the orders are being recorded automatically.
So that's orders.
Really very simple.
So now what about expenses.
Well it's also very simple, but not all of it is going to be recorded automatically.
So in order to clarify this, let's have a look at some of the main expenses that you can expect.
And remember an expense is basically anything that you are paying for, anything that you have bought
to keep your business running.
So kicking things off with expenses that are going to be recorded for you automatically.
The first one is your Shopify subscription and any apps that you might have bought.
The second main expense will be any product that you have bought on AliExpress or dropshipping, or
indeed any supplier that you might be using, and that includes all of the shipping costs.
So if you think about the first expense, of course, that's all being recorded within your Shopify
admin.
And for the second one that's going to be recorded automatically with the supplier.
Now your third main expense will also be recorded automatically because that typically will be virtual
assistance if you choose to use them and all of that information you're going to be able to easily find
at online jobs or Upwork or whatever platform you decide to use.
So those three categories of expenses, they're not exhaustive.
There may be others, but they're probably the principal ones.
That's going to make up the majority of your expenses going forward.
But there are others that you perhaps will want to record manually.
And I suggest you use a simple spreadsheet.
So that could be anything like your office supplies.
So if you're at home and you're thinking right now, well, I'm ready to start my business, but I'd
really like a new desk or a new laptop.
Those are expenses.
You can expense those as part of your business, so make sure you record exactly where and when you
bought them.
So now all of your orders and all of your expenses are very neatly taken care of.
So what's going to happen is once a year, you're going to have to submit your accounts to your local
tax authority.
And you can either do this yourself.
But what I suggest you do is use the services of a local accountant.
And I stress the word local here because it's a local accountant that will be familiar with all the
regulations and customs of your country, things that you really don't want to get involved with.
Now, if you're wondering where you can find a local accountant, well, I suggest you turn to Google.
Simply type in local accountant wherever you are, and many, many services will pop up now in order
to choose the right one.
What I suggest you do is that you contact them.
Typically, an accountant will give you some of their time for free, and that will give you an opportunity
to see whether you think that you can work with them.
So there you have it, a simple but very effective way to get started with your accounting.