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A Customer Asks Why Don't I Write Something To Help Online Booksellers With Their Bookkeeping 05/16/06 Return To Online Bookselling Home Page |
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One of My First Customers Asked
"If you are an engineer and you know all the math and programming stuff, why don't you come up with some software to help online booksellers keep their books and make doing their taxes easier?"
My Response
It would seem you are something of a mind-reader. From the day I set out to publish my book I had plans to put together a spreadsheet to help online booksellers (particularly myself) keep their books organized, i.e., something that would make sales tax reporting easy and their Schedule C a less daunting task.
It has taken me since the day I finished my book to complete the spreadsheet, and spreadsheet is not really an accurate description. It is in Excel, but it is 19 sheets all tabbed at the bottom of the workbook to make navigation easy. It also does a lot more than just tell you what your sales and expenses are, IT SHOWS YOU with 55 different graphs and charts. You can very quickly SEE how your online bookselling business is doing, whether you are meeting your profit goals, and if you are growing your inventory at the rate you set out to do.
I have a couple engineering friends that have looked this over and commented how well organized and complete it is. A couple commented that they did not know anything that useful could be done with Excel.
Well, I am very happy with it and have started using it myself. I can already see that when it comes time to do my taxes, I will have all the data I need for my Schedule C in less than a minute because the way the spreadsheet is set up, I am motivated to enter all my sales and expenses as they occur just to SEE the performance chart changes.
I don't even think the spreadsheet is limited to a bookselling business although I would need to change some text and get another ISBN to market it as a bookkeeping spreadsheet for eBay sellers.
Anyway, your question was anticipated and in the plans when you asked, but it does confirm my suspicion that online booksellers want something that is not as expensive, complicated, or awkward as some of the bookkeeping software packages available. I sincerely hope you find the complimentary copy I sent you very helpful and look forward to your comments. You are visitor:
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