If you ever decide to go into business (which I actually do recommend, but only for those with patience and a lot of forethought), you'll quickly learn one of the most complicated and time consuming parts of running your organization is not the day-to-day work. It's not the human resources. It's not purchasing, inventory (well maybe), or lists and ideas.
It's all about the record-keeping.
Every last thing you spend money on needs to be recorded. Sounds easy? Well, there isn't an app yet (that I know of) that you can just snap a picture of a receipt and have it magically filed away (if you know of one, please tell me). So every day you'll have to log everything that came in, and everything that's gone out.
And if your work involves quick 3-day stints of activity, with a flurry of things happening all at once, it's a real pain. It's probably one of the most time consuming parts of the conventions, and the least fun one.
I recommend getting a good scanner - not a printer/scanner combination, but a $200+ brother scanner that can take 20+ pages per minute. Install the Optical Character Recognition, and scan to PDF files. You can then search through them later if you need to look something up, and you'll always be able to easily keep a backup of your receipts on the cloud.
Then you've got to add up every expense, categorize it correctly, and have a final total.
Working in multiple states? Well, let's hope you categorized by state also. Sounds like it's getting complicated? It is. I built an entire web database to keep track of mine, and I still have to manually input all the data.
The better you keep track of your expenses, the easier filing proper business taxes correctly will be. And sometimes doing it right can be disappointing when you find out that no one else even does theirs correctly. Case in point: Nonprofit organizations (we are not one) have publicly available tax paperwork. I downloaded the documents for one of top 10 largest anime conventions in the country.
All the expenses? Millions worth? Listed under "Conventions and Tradeshow expenses." I'm pretty sure that if you organize a convention, that is not what that column is for. There are other columns for things like "Advertising" that would probably be more appropriate for some things.
Some people say: just get an accountant. Which would be great, if you have the budget to hire an accountant. Full-time. Weekly salary. Money that could be going towards making what you produce better. Accountants can't just magically add everything together at the end of the year - you have to have them do it year round, giving them every single expense, and you're still doing 90% of the work of keeping track of them.
Good luck, happy filing, and buy a scanner!
It's all about the record-keeping.
Every last thing you spend money on needs to be recorded. Sounds easy? Well, there isn't an app yet (that I know of) that you can just snap a picture of a receipt and have it magically filed away (if you know of one, please tell me). So every day you'll have to log everything that came in, and everything that's gone out.
And if your work involves quick 3-day stints of activity, with a flurry of things happening all at once, it's a real pain. It's probably one of the most time consuming parts of the conventions, and the least fun one.
I recommend getting a good scanner - not a printer/scanner combination, but a $200+ brother scanner that can take 20+ pages per minute. Install the Optical Character Recognition, and scan to PDF files. You can then search through them later if you need to look something up, and you'll always be able to easily keep a backup of your receipts on the cloud.
Then you've got to add up every expense, categorize it correctly, and have a final total.
Working in multiple states? Well, let's hope you categorized by state also. Sounds like it's getting complicated? It is. I built an entire web database to keep track of mine, and I still have to manually input all the data.
The better you keep track of your expenses, the easier filing proper business taxes correctly will be. And sometimes doing it right can be disappointing when you find out that no one else even does theirs correctly. Case in point: Nonprofit organizations (we are not one) have publicly available tax paperwork. I downloaded the documents for one of top 10 largest anime conventions in the country.
All the expenses? Millions worth? Listed under "Conventions and Tradeshow expenses." I'm pretty sure that if you organize a convention, that is not what that column is for. There are other columns for things like "Advertising" that would probably be more appropriate for some things.
Some people say: just get an accountant. Which would be great, if you have the budget to hire an accountant. Full-time. Weekly salary. Money that could be going towards making what you produce better. Accountants can't just magically add everything together at the end of the year - you have to have them do it year round, giving them every single expense, and you're still doing 90% of the work of keeping track of them.
Good luck, happy filing, and buy a scanner!
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