My Top 5 Bookkeeping Resources for Retail Boutique Owners

This week, I’m doing something a little different. Instead of going more in depth on a specific topic, I’m going to highlight a couple of my most popular bookkeeping resources that have helped boutique owners just like YOU feel more confident in managing their own bookkeeping. 

Free Bookkeeping Resources

Chart of Accounts Template for Your Boutique

Without a doubt, this resource has been the most downloaded. As a quick refresher a chart of accounts is simply the bookkeeping term that refers to a list that is used to organize and group together all the financial activity in your business. 

It is grouped into 6 different buckets (Assets, Liabilities, Equity, Income, Cost of Goods, and Expenses), and what accounts you use will be the foundation of how your financial information is grouped together on your financial statements (Balance Sheet & Profit and Loss). For a more in depth look at what the Chart of Accounts is, you can check out a previous blog post all about Understanding the Chart of Accounts for Retail Businesses.

This chart of accounts template resource is a download of a Google Sheet that you can customize and import DIRECTLY into your own Quickbooks Online account to help you organize all your financial activity into buckets & categories that are relevant to your boutique business. 

If you don’t utilize Quickbooks Online, you can still use the same structure & categorizes to help you organize your finances in another bookkeeping software, or even in a simple bookkeeping spreadsheet. 

To sign up for this FREE template yourself, head on over to https://www.findingfreedomfinancial.com/coa-template/ 

Profit First Template for Retailers

One of my favorite books to help businesses owners manage the actual cash flowing in and out of their business is the book Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. If you’re not familiar with that book, I HIGHLY encourage you to check it out! If you want the short version, you can head over to my blog post about Understanding the Profit First System for Retail Businesses.

In a nutshell, the profit first method helps you divide out all the sales deposits you receive into separate “buckets” to help you replenish your inventory, save for taxes, pay yourself, and more! And to help you implement this in your own business, I created a Profit First Template. that will help you calculate the amount that should go into these buckets each and every week. There’s also a short video included with the download that will help you set up & utilize this template so you can make sure to start using it right away to help you start feeling more in control of the cash in your business.

Tax Deduction Guide for Your Boutique

Another one of my most popular downloadable resources is a tax deduction guide that is specific to retail boutique owners just like you. Now, I’ll be the first to admit, this is not an all-inclusive list, and there MAY be other deductions that you can take advantage of that are more specific to your business. Because of that, I always recommend that you work with a tax professional to help ensure that you’re taking advantage of all the deductions available to you.

With that said, this downloadable tax deduction guide is a GREAT place to start if you’re wanting to know what types of expenses you should be tracking in your business. You can sign up for this free resource at https://www.findingfreedomfinancial.com/deductions/.

Free Masterclass: How to Feel Confident in Your Own Bookkeeping

This is one of my newest resources, and is currently an on-demand masterclass that you can register for. In this (roughly) one hour masterclass, I go over the top 3 mistakes I see retailers making when doing their own bookkeeping, to hopefully help you avoid making these mistakes yourself! 

I also go through my 5 step framework to help you make sure that you’re staying caught up on your bookkeeping all year long, and taking the necessary steps to ensure the work you’re doing is ACCURATE! After all, what’s the point of bookkeeping if your numbers aren’t going to be accurate?

If you’re ready to set aside an hour of your time to learn about these things, then you can register now at https://www.findingfreedomfinancial.com/masterclass/ 

Paid Bookkeeping Resources

Shopify Bookkeeping Made Simple

This is my signature bookkeeping course that teaches you EXACTLY what (and when) you need to be doing to accurately complete your own bookkeeping each and every month. It dives in to:

• How to setup a Quickbooks Online account
• How to import your CUSTOM chart of accounts
• How to track every single dollar that flows in and out of your business
• How to accurately record all the sales data from your Shopify (or other POS system) account WITHOUT using one of those awful integrations (trust me, you don’t want to rely on them)
• How to review everything for accuracy so you can have CONFIDENCE that what you’re doing is correct
• How to actually read AND understand your financial reports
• And SO much more!

This course also comes with a 12 month membership to our private Facebook community where you can get your questions answered by a professional bookkeeper, along with monthly live Q&A calls where you can get any and all of your bookkeeping related questions answered.

For more information on this resource, you can visit https://www.findingfreedomfinancial.com/bookkeeping-basics-course/ 

…And More!

Today’s post is just highlighting the top 5 most popular resources that I have available, but this doesn’t even go over the close to 50 other blog posts I’ve already published on the site that answer some of the most common questions I get as a professional retail bookkeeper. So, if you have any specific questions you need answers to, go ahead and use the search box on the blog, and see if I’ve already answered it! And if I haven’t, PLEASE send me a DM on instagram @findingfreedomfinancial and I’d love to answer it in a future blog post. 

I hope you all know how much I want you to succeed in your businesses. That’s why we work hard to help make these types of resources available to you. I want you to be able to have the confidence in your finances & taxes, so you can use that information to help you make smarter business decisions, AND so you can have a stress-free tax season (yes, it’s possible). 

Here’s to finding your own version of freedom,