Table of Contents
Overview
For most business owners, accounting is a scary topic to think about. But fear not, artists! We have created a dead simple way for you to handle your accounting with Art Storefronts. A way that will make both you and your CPA happy.
The basic concept is this: You should not be entering in every single customer order into your accounting software. This is not only cumbersome, it is unnecessary because the data already exists within the ASF platform which both your accountant, and the IRS for that matter, can access if you make it available to them. Therefore, all you need to do is make simple a bulk entry that summarizes your sales, shipping, and taxes.
If you want to make this super easy on yourself, you can do this once per year after the year concludes. If you want to have monthly reporting, you will make one bulk entry per month. That's it. Doing anything else is likely unnecessary and will just waste time you could have spent elsewhere!
Here goes:
Login to Quickbooks or whatever accounting program you use.
If this is the first time you are doing this, go to the Customers section and add “Art Storefronts” as the customer name. If you have already done this, skip to the next point.
Now, create a sales receipt. Set the customer as Art Storefronts.
Choose a date for the sales receipt. If you plan to do this on a monthly basis, we recommend always setting the date to the first day of that month. If you are doing this in one feel swoop once a year, we recommend setting the date to 12/31 for that year.
Download the right CSV, By going to your orders page within the jump to menu on your Site manager and clicking Export orders
Choose the parameters of the orders you wish to export the Start date the end date and the order status and file type.
This will email you a copy of the order report, open this up in your favourite spreadsheet and find the column labeled “New Subtotal”. Scroll down to the very bottom and copy (or jot down) the number at the very bottom, which is a total of all the numbers in that column.Do the same thing for the columns “Shipping Total”, “Tax Total”.
Go back to Quickbooks where you are editing your sales receipt
Create a line item called “Sales from ASF” (or use the one that you already created last time). Enter the “New Subtotal” number in for the “amount”.
Create a line item called “Shipping Total” (or use the one that you already created last time). Enter the “Shipping Total” number in for the “amount”.
Create a line item called “Tax Total” (or use the one that you already created last time). Enter the “Tax Total” number in for the “amount”.
Save it!
You are done! You just completed the accounting for your sales transactions, for the period you downloaded.
Open up a sales report for the period you just entered in, and you can see a summary.
Fulfillment Artists
For Fulfillment Artists Do you want to track your costs for print fulfillment and transaction fees within your accounting software? Here’s the easy way to do that.
Login to Quickbooks or whatever accounting program you use.
Create a new account (or use the one that you already created last time), and name it “ASF Print Fulfillment”, and specify that it is a “COST OF GOODS SOLD” account.
Create a new account (or use the one that you already created last time), and name it “ASF Shipping costs”, and specify that it is a “COST OF GOODS SOLD” account.
Create a new account (or use the one that you already created last time), and name it “ASF Tax from costs”, and specify that it is a “COST OF GOODS SOLD” account.
Create a new account (or use the one that you already created last time), and name it “ASF Transaction Fees”, and specify that it is a “COST OF GOODS SOLD” account.
Download the right CSV
Open up a “Profit & Loss” report for the date range you just entered in, and you should be able to see the Cost of Goods entries in there.