Maintaining Basic Book Keeping For Small Window Cleaning Businesses
If you are the proud owner of a small window cleaning business, you most likely don’t have sufficient money to employ a bookkeeper or an accountant of your own. You’ve still got to maintain some accounting records of course, otherwise you won’t be able to compile your tax and VAT returns, and you will have no way to determine whether your business is running at a profit or a loss. Below are guidelines on basic book keeping for small window cleaning businesses.
In the first place you need a receipt book and an invoice book. The receipt book is used when a customer pays you in cash and you have to provide him with proof of payment. The invoice book is for when you provide credit to a customer (only advisable with regular customers!).
Your next step is to file all documents pertaining to company related expenses. If you buy cleaning material and pay cash, keep the cash slip! The same goes for petrol, maintenance of your delivery vehicle et cetera. For wages you need a wage register where the employee can sign for the receipt of his weekly pay.
At the office you should have a cash book, into which all these income and expenses are then entered on a daily basis. You also need registers to keep track of credit sales and of business related items you bought on credit. These are called accounts receivable registers and accounts payable registers.
Now use the receipt book mentioned above and enter all the money that you received during the day on the left hand side of the cash book. Use the expense vouchers to write down all expenses on the right hand side. There should be columns for the total amounts, and also columns showing the nature of the income or expense. Include a column on the expenses side for the total of the wage register. At the end of the month, when you add up all the different columns, you’ll know exactly how much you made in sales and how much you spend on things like cleaning materials, gas, wages etc.
If you had credit sales, the invoices from your invoice book should be entered in the accounts receivable register in numerical order. At the end of the month you will be able to get a total for credit sales therefore. The same is true for items you bought on credit, which goes into the accounts payable register.
If you bought anything on account during the month, e. G. Cleaning material, which hasn’t been paid yet, this has to be deducted from your gross profit because obviously once you’ve paid it you will have less in the bank. Similarly, if you gave credit to one or more customers and they haven’t paid you yet, you must add that to the profit for the month shown by your cash book.
Following the basic book keeping for small window cleaning businesses guidelines above will give you an excellent idea of the profitability or not of your business.
Considering becoming self employed as a professional window cleaner ? All you need to know and more on window cleaning services now in our window cleaners guide.
