Bookkeeping for a one-person business, in twenty minutes a week

Most one-person businesses do their books once a year, in a panic, from a carrier bag. It is not laziness — it is that nobody ever defined what "doing the books" means for a business with no staff and no stock. It means five things, and it takes about twenty minutes a week.

First, a separate account

Not a business account necessarily — just an account that is not the one your groceries come out of. Everything the business earns lands there, everything it spends leaves from there, and you pay yourself by moving money to your personal account. That single change removes most of the work, because the statement becomes the record.

The five things to record

1. 1Money in: date, who from, how much, what for. Match it to an invoice number where there is one.
2. 2Money out: date, supplier, amount, category, and the receipt photographed the day it exists.
3. 3What you owe and what is owed to you — unpaid invoices, both directions.
4. 4What you took out for yourself, so you can see what the business actually paid you.
5. 5Anything bought that lasts — a laptop, a camera. It is treated differently and it is the thing people forget to mention.

Tax money is not your money

Move a percentage of every payment into a second account the day it lands, and treat that account as though it does not exist. The right percentage depends on where you live and what you earn, so ask an accountant once — an hour of their time is cheaper than one bad January. The habit matters more than the exact number: money set aside weekly is never a shock.

Twenty minutes, once a week

• Open the account and the sheet side by side; enter everything since last time.
• Photograph any receipt still in a pocket or a bag.
• Mark what has been paid; note anything overdue.
• Move the tax percentage across.
• Look at one number: what the business earned this month, after costs.

Doing it weekly rather than yearly is not about being tidy. It is that a business you can see is a business you can decide about — which product to drop, which client to stop taking, whether you can afford a week off. That is what the twenty minutes actually buys.