Hey everyone.. So, I've been lurking these forums for months now. I'm pretty sure I spent at least 4hours a day almost every day for the first month when I first got into this. Like most, I bought a new car and decided I wanted to learn how to take care of it properly. Learning more and more, It became an addiction. Eventually I thought "hey! I can detail other cars too!" and that pretty much began my mobile detailing business. I've been doing pretty well, learning everything I know from these forums.
As my services and knowledge grew, I noticed my bank account was shrinking and had to put a stop to buying any product I felt like trying and focus on first gaining profits. So, I read a whole lot about tracking finances and what not but never really found something that worked for me.
With that being said.. I may not have much new knowledge to contribute to the forum, but I figure I can at least share this.
I tweaked a template I found to suit my needs, and track only the information I wanted on it.
Its very simple. You just plug in the numbers and it makes up graphs and adds and subtracts for you automatically. Its in Excel so if you wanted to track anything additional, you can obviously add in the extra fields. I use this template to track my month to month finances, along with a duplicate that I have adding up my entire year.
If you would like a copy of it please send me a PM with your email and I'll send it out to you.
For anyone just starting out, I can't stretch the importance of tracking finances. For the first two months, I was so caught up on learning and buying new products to use.. that even after I made about $700 in customers, my detailing business was still at around -$500 and just sinking as my addiction of trying to new products and learning grew. So even though I felt like I was doing well, I was actually doing bad. Now that I keep track, It definitely opens my eyes and allows me to only buy more when my profits are doing really well.
I've attached a screenshot of it below.
-Eric
As my services and knowledge grew, I noticed my bank account was shrinking and had to put a stop to buying any product I felt like trying and focus on first gaining profits. So, I read a whole lot about tracking finances and what not but never really found something that worked for me.
With that being said.. I may not have much new knowledge to contribute to the forum, but I figure I can at least share this.
I tweaked a template I found to suit my needs, and track only the information I wanted on it.
Its very simple. You just plug in the numbers and it makes up graphs and adds and subtracts for you automatically. Its in Excel so if you wanted to track anything additional, you can obviously add in the extra fields. I use this template to track my month to month finances, along with a duplicate that I have adding up my entire year.
If you would like a copy of it please send me a PM with your email and I'll send it out to you.
For anyone just starting out, I can't stretch the importance of tracking finances. For the first two months, I was so caught up on learning and buying new products to use.. that even after I made about $700 in customers, my detailing business was still at around -$500 and just sinking as my addiction of trying to new products and learning grew. So even though I felt like I was doing well, I was actually doing bad. Now that I keep track, It definitely opens my eyes and allows me to only buy more when my profits are doing really well.
I've attached a screenshot of it below.
-Eric
