How do You Guys Manage Your Finances ? (21)
I was so confused working with different affiliate networks and Traffic Sources, JVs and Credit Cards..Everything around me is getting messed up..how do you guys keep yourself updated with the payments and other finances? Any sheets, Apps or Softwares??
Sean
excel sheet, I only work with 5-6 networks / advertisers and 4-5 traffic sources so it's manageable, if it was more complex I'd recommend checking out something like freshbooks.com.
http://outright.com
http://mint.com
excel is king, freshbooks is amazing also for invoicing
I export my bank statements every month and upload them to my ClearBooks account (UK alternative to FreshBooks).
Makes accounting a breeze, well, after you've actually figured out what each payment is for!
Excel...im very new to excel but am very excited to learn more about it, i never gave much importance to book keeping, but just understood its value.. Does anyone has any helpful advice on excel sheets? any basics or example files I may have a look at ?
I ignored Excel sheets for the longest time, too. Eventually started to realize I was kind of reinventing the wheel in making little apps or scripts to do things that could already be done with spreadsheets.
Apparently there's a bunch of templates like these: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/te...006206279.aspx
And you don't wanna miss this one: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/te...104040650.aspx
Easy.
I float a check on the 25th.
Don't forget to check out xero.com it's pretty slick. I've been using it for a while.
For those who are Australian, I Just started using pocketbook.com and so far it's OK.. I've made a few suggestions to the creators and it looks like it's going to get updated pretty often.
I use Crunch to handle my accounting, and a crap ton of notebooks / Excel spreadsheets to track my campaigns.
I suggest using WaveApps.com - free and allows you to easily generate reports while tracking income/expenses.
Some really neat features on there so you should check it out.
Originally Posted by dlittlebirdy
good old excel spreadsheet
I am using 2 'main' sheets which are structured like that:
1: Total running costs & income sheet
This sheet is just to track total incoming and outgoing transactions from all bank accounts. Whenever I send X to let's say a traffic source, it's noted as -X $ in the sheet sorted according to date. When a payment comes in, it's obviously noted as income with an auto calc function at the bottom, same goes for expenses. This gives you a pretty straight forward overview of your total cost/income and saves the accountant a shitload of time. Just pin all statements / invoices behind it and you're set to go. From my experience if you're using an accountant, this saves at least 3-4 hours of his time which he bills me 100/hour + for.
2. Daily spent / profit sheet
As for accounting you just need to incoming / outgoing transactions, I got another sheet where I enter the daily income / daily costs in the same way. That sheet isn't that important for accounting but for checking how your campaigns are doing overall. For every source / network you just enter the daily data pulled out of the networks interface and use a SUM function and there you go.
This solution works pretty well for me, I used one sheet for overall stats only before but it was kinda hickhack to keep it organized. Doing a deposit of $500 to a source is considered a $500 'minus' in accounting but in fact, I don't count it in my sheet #2 until I've spent it. If you split this two up you're pretty set to go with your finance in my opinion. To keep it as simple as possible, pay everything you can deduct via CC / EC cards that are connected to your business account.
If you don't have a book keeper, get one.
It's a move i made only recently and your expenses, income, and taxes will be a lot more organized. More free time for your work!
You're right, Except Excel, Everyone has their piece of software which suites them the best, I actually planned hiring one, Thanx for your advices guys...!
I use an oldfashioned notepad 
How do you guys manage the figures in Excel/Notepad? Is that after payment has been received, or based off your stats?
You definitely want to be careful if it's the latter. A lot of money can get sucked up in currency conversions, wire fees, and etc if you're an international affiliate. That also applies to the money you're loading in to your traffic sources. For example, not budgeting for your VAT (instant margin guzzler)...
I tell newbies to stick to 1-3 trusted networks while they're getting started for two reasons. 1) Consolidating leads and getting over the minimum payments. 2) It's a few squillion times easier to track.
I didn't and it was horrible then
One useful trick for this - after you've been paid a few times, go back to your old stats and derive a ratio between Theoretical Monies and Actual Monies.
You can now apply that ratio to Theoretical Monies you get in future, to get a much more accurate cashflow prediction. I'll usually further reduce this ratio by a little bit to account for future currency fluctuations.
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