Detailed Notes
In this episode of the Building Better Developers podcast, the hosts discuss an essential aspect of running a side hustle or small business: accounting. For developers and entrepreneurs, maintaining proper financial practices is critical to ensuring long-term success, and this episode offers practical advice on managing your business’s finances, from setting up accounts to handling invoicing and billing.
Read more... https://develpreneur.com/accounting-tips-for-side-hustles-how-to-manage-invoicing-and-billing-like-a-pro/
We invite you to join our community and share your coding journey with us. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, there’s always room to learn and grow together. Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes. Together, let’s continue exploring the exciting world of software development.
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Transcript Text
[Music] cloud and here we are as I'm aligning all of my stuff up so I can sort of look at the camera gosh I got like all kinds of I'm a little glowy today this is like pretty cool I guess Angelic let's see let's swing that mic there do that how do everybody what was that mute your notifications mute my notifications yes because those things drive me nuts it said let's see let's make it sure okay wow I had my I've had my do not disturb this is interesting I've had my do not disturb on I think since the last time we met and yet I still get stuff so ah let's see let's try for one hour let's try that or maybe it just oh I think what I did is it just we're gonna find out I don't think I think I gotta work on that because I think my notifications are coming in when they shouldn't and I gotta go figure out what it what is overright yeah do not disturb on okay we're going to find out if if you hear a bunch of beeps I'll cuss we may edit it out we may not I can't I don't know did you edit that out last time or did we keep that in no I took it it was a little longer than I liked so I just ch chopped it so you guys missed out there you go you missed out on some really good like behind the scenes stuff but oh well actually so did the podcast people because that was I think we would have it was right in the middle of that side of it all right so we are getting down to the end of this season so let's say we've got basically got two more topics we want to cover before we wrap this sucker up do we have something we haven't thrown out yet that we want to um let's see is there anything you have off the top of your head while we're I'm digging a little bit here let's see I don't think taxes are a good one because this is the developer Journey not the business setting up a business had lots of tax questions this week I was uh reconciling my books now that you know what that actually would be sort of a I don't think tax questions but we could [Music] do um like keeping track of your business basically that could like you know accounting types of things and stuff like that working on your business not in your business this is really on your business well this is actually like this is this is like working on your business but this is actually behind the scenes because working on your business I typically think of as more like uh marketing and stuff like this um this is a little bit this is working in the business but behind the scenes this is a non-billable working in the business so it's the things like accounting and actually I think accounting invoicing and billing because I don't think we've really talked about that um I'm sorry this go well with the pricing one we did so yeah I like that so let's yeah because I don't think we've actually talked about the actual invoicing side of it or anything like that and and I know we've talked about pricing but we didn't really get into that so let's go with invoicing for this one or invo we'll go into accounting and we'll hope people don't fall asleep and we'll see how that goes so all right that's where we're going to start with do I want to now I'll go I was trying to St I wanted to grab a hat real quick but because I'm like shining a little too much a little too little too Holy Roller right now with this little this nice little bright glow going on so you guys get the special version this time well hello and welcome back we are continuing the developer Journey we are building better developers it is developing newer we are cranking through this season almost there I happen to be Rob Broadhead one of the founders of developing building better developers also a founder of RB Consulting where we do software Consulting business Consulting we look at ways to simplify automate and integrate your systems so that your technology sprawl and all of the related pain can be removed and reduced as you get a nice you know instead of being in that stinky smelly car going down the road that's about to fall apart we're going to put that stuff back together and get you in that like you know F1 Formula racer kind of thing good thing bad bad thing uh let's see thing I think I wow I'm trying to think out if I I've talked about this last time oh so get I'll start with the good one and then I'll just flip into good thing and you guys can look into this there's a whole bunch of stuff my son's giv me some information there's a bunch of stuff going around there's stuff dealing with Adobe and their uh Creative Cloud and some of their subscriptions and stuff like that well one of the things that I got the other day was something that said hey we can you can flip your subscription which I happen to have been a subscriber for a long time for a bunch of different stuff like hey you can flip your subscription to this other thing that's 50% less and it's actually it's not quite the same stuff that was the other one had but it's a it's actually a better fit to me I was actually just digging I was just looking you know the other day I was starting to look through that a little bit and say ah there's a lot of stuff I don't use so good thing is I get what I need essentially all the same stuff I need for half the price each month bad thing along the same lines is I've been doing some Financial straightening stuff out and things like that and uh there's like it's one of those it's like automation is really nice for financial stuff it's just like pay your bills online do this do that just don't even think about it it is also a real pain when you let it just go for too long and now you got to like roll it all back and clean it all up and figure out how you had I literally am financially technology sprawl I have too many places too many things going on all these little deals I took advantage of and all this crap that is now it's like it wasn't probably worth the deal so it's like no simplify it all right back integrate stuff I'm going to get like you know nice little pipeline of money coming in money going out so I don't have to look a thousand different places so there's some good and some bad right there and it may actually have something to do with our topic today but I'm gonna hold on because I want you guys hold your breath and let Michael introduce himself go for it hey everyone my name is mikaeel Mage I'm one of the co-founders of developer ner building other developers I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we help small to midsize businesses analyze their software stack look at what their business needs are and build the right software tool for their needs good and bad this week uh the I'll start with the bad went out bought some TV antennas because my wife loves NASCAR and uh Infinity Series has decided to move everything over to CW which is only available over the air or on Hulu live um could not get that to work so spent $300 per antennas had to take it all back and then had to go subscribe for Hulu live uh tried YouTube TV and found out we're in the zone that is blacked out for YouTube TV the only source was Hulu live so my TV build just doubled again uh gota love this uh the good is I've been using this free financial tool called wave apps for many many years to do my financial bookkeeping for my company books recently they changed their tears and things got a little funky today I figured out how to get everything the way I wanted it like I used to so now I'm able to continue to use the tool did not have to go buy QuickBooks thank God uh and I'm back to reconciling my books which kind of leads into our topic today wow we both had these you know you know a little bit of a spoiler alert or whatever but now we don't have to worry about spoiling it because now it ish we're serving this right on front in front of everybody on the table we're going to talk about the accounting side of your side hustle of your business really going to get we've talked about pricing which is really not the accounting side we're going to talk about invoicing and billing and some of those kinds of things now Michael let us he'll give me like a nice little starter thing was he mentioned the the qword QuickBooks whether you use QuickBooks or F books or all the other tools out there the first thing is i' highly highly highly recommend that you pick a a tool that you used for your side hustle for keeping track of all of your transactions separate from just like we've mentioned before you should have when you're starting a business have a separate account there should be a straight business account period that's like it's not your extra checkin account or your other savings account or a credit card that you're just like I'm just going to call that my business expenses now maybe you put your business expenses on that but there should be somewhere a checking account literally a checking account that is tied to your business that you drive everything through that that is going to be key now as part of that you should have a some sort of accounting software that you can use that is tied to that or that tracks that so you can I don't know keep track of your bottom line but also what you're going to need depending on where you're at at the very least you're going to need to be able to some sort sort of billing and invoicing some sort of reports related to that reports related to your income and expense your your your final year stuff filing taxes potentially quarterly taxes if you need to do that and maybe even payroll so find a tool that is comfortable for you like Michael said he's like he has been in Wave Accounting forever and to change that would be a pain not only for him as a US user but also because then he's got to move all the data and make sure that it moves right and all that kind of crap nobody trust me you don't want to have to jump to a whole different system really ever and in any situation this is like across the board basically something you don't want to do it's it's not pretty so when you look at a tool take a look at where it can grow because that's something you don't want to jump into and a lot of people do this they jump into some like you know free little app that does something super simple for them and it's cheap or like I said cheap or free like okay cool this will cover me right now and then six months or a year from now it doesn't cover them anymore because now suddenly instead of something that only you know that is great for having five customers doesn't work when you have 500 customers or it doesn't expand to having to track expenses from different places or the number of venders that you have or or the it gets into like I don't want you guys to fall asleep talking about accounting stuff but like classifications and things like that that you have to worry about including one of the big things you're going to find across the board is does it have any integration with you know electronic integration with like your bank accounts or other places like that including electronic filing of taxes which is required in some cases and in some certain places so the other piece is the ability to calculate or file taxes for you and this is not just your year in taxes it could be at other levels and then payroll is another big thing actually the fourth big thing that is probably more important than all of those that a lot of these tools have some uh they will work with you on it is the ability to actually take payments now you may have a square account or something like that where you can run everything through it but there are accounting software options out there where they also have either directly or as part of an add-on the ability to take payments whether it's you know through like credit cards or some I think even have the ability to set up a and some things like that so that's something you need to think about I want us before I pass it over the mic though I also want to talk about the billing and invoicing side of it we've talked about rates this is about frequency and professionalism now you can charge whatever it is let's just say you're you you're a nice little developer and you charge 50 bucks an hour and we're GNA we'll take two different let's say you you're charging 50 bucks an hour and at the end of a week you did 20 hours of work and you want to go Bill them for the Thousand or 20 time 5050 is a th000 just quick math three people or let's say that you had a thousand project that you build them for like hey I I we agreed it's going to be a thousand project boom I'm going to go ahead and bill you for it now we have mentioned uh upwork and Guru and some of these other sites they a lot of times will help you with that piece of it they do include in their offerings and things like that sometimes a level of invoice in and billing and things of that nature so this may you may be able to take that off the table but let's assume for this for this exercise that you haven't that you actually do need to send an invoice and I have had people work for me at times where it has been like pulling teeth to get them to send me an invoice so I can say yes this is the work that came in and I can tie it to a check because I actually have proper accounting principles of some sort as much as I can being not an encounter so what you will need to do sometimes you'll do things like POS and things like that so talk to your customer you should always have something and you you may be asked by the qu customer how do you handle billing so with that question it's going to be how frequently do you send one do you s do you send them an invoice every month do you send them every week every two weeks bi-weekly 15th in the end of the month whatever and a lot of times that is it's up to you it's how you build now realize that if you wanted to build every week they may or may not pay those off every week they may just like you know a month later pay off three of them at once and you get a check and you have to go back and track all of those so the B the granularity of your billing is how you do stuff and they just need to know that hey I'm going to send you an invoice every so these on this schedule and then follow up it's just like we talked about podcasts and blogs and things like that you like you need to be scheduled now you don't have to send it at 5:00 a.m. every Tuesday or something like that but what you do need to do is do it like if you say it's every other week and I send it to end of the week every other week you need to make sure that you send it the end of the week every other week that that they need to understand when to expect it and then as part of that there's also like what are the terms which are basically how soon do you expect that to be paid which is critical because if you don't mention anything you don't know you're it's up to that customer and it could be some places will wait 90 days or more to pay a bill that may be a problem for you particularly if this is more than a side hustle and you need to like put food on your table now it can go as low as like some places like immediately or you know maybe seven days later or two within two weeks or something like that make sure you were clear on all of those kinds of things this thing these things I'm talking about like how often you going to Bill them what is the expectation for payments and make sure that you are clear on that before you go into especially a longer term kind of project it's a oneandone it's probably not going to be as big a deal but it could be and definitely if it's going to be something where you're going to get into a three or six or 12 month agreement make sure that you are very clear on that I will pause there and pass it over to Mike and see what are your thoughts on this and maybe questions and and some you know hints that you may have for people yeah so I know I initially in our introduction started talking about the QuickBooks and waves there are other ways you can keep track of your books even if you're just starting out you need to record everything so when I went through the whole rebranding process and relaunching process I actually was having to keep two separate books because I still had the old company that was being phased out and had to reset and create a new Ledger for the new company except since the new company didn't exist yet it really didn't make sense to go out and spend a lot of money on expensive software to set up a new Ledger ironically typically all a ledger is is a spreadsheet so you can go get open Office lead braate if you have Excel use Excel just keep track of the what you're spending what's coming in what's going out initially and then as you need to evolve the business you move into other applications like wave apps or you know free books QuickBooks whatever as you're going through this process like Rob mentioned you know we also want to invoice our customers we want to send out those nice pretty invoices well what he didn't mention is yes you can go get those other tools but here again you can use free tools for the process tools like Pages uh word open Office a lot of these have good free templates for invoicing just go hey find a template I want invoices and then go pick one that works for you and just drop it in there add a logo you're done minutes worth of time does not take that long it may seem daunting at first but once you get it done right it's pretty much copy paste move on but make sure you record those payments into your Ledger you don't want to not get paid on top of that though as you're going through this process of working the business you need to keep track of those bank accounts you want to make sure you reconcile your income and your expenses with your Ledger cuz sometimes you may have those odd payments like I did initially where everything was on a personal credit card because the business account didn't exist yet I was still going through the process of getting the LLC the escorp so I didn't really have the tax ID and all that to go just go set up up business account well also and lesson learn is I got hacked again a month ago on my business account for some strange reason because I don't use the card for anything use you you want a credit card or a business card to charge those ex external expenses to because if something does happen you don't want to tie up your physical money while you're trying to reconcile any grievances or misch charges so you do still need to keep track of where are you spending money outside of your business checking because if you don't and you don't see it on your Ledger you're going to forget to put it in there and not pay yourself so you're going to go pay for something and not get deducted ran into that in recently because I had those weird charges I had to go literally like Rob mention with his subscriptions I had to go through a whole bunch of different websites to say okay did I buy this did I buy this I had it all written down but it's like where did these weird charges come from ultimately they weren't mine um so it's one of those things it it's tedious but if you stay on top of this it's going to be easy year now the bad thing I did and you know a lot of business owners do this we are reluctant to work in the business a lot it's because really working on the business you know that's where we get paid that's where we make the money working in the business we're not really getting paid we're not we we're doing things that we don't feel is as productive because we're not getting paid for but it does make a difference because if you aren't keeping an eye on those accounts something weird like a miscellaneous charge could come in and then you don't catch it well someone could essentially come in drain your account and then you're like whoa what happened um so kind of following up on your accounts at least once a week don't necessarily have to do it daily but I find at least once a week take a snapshot of your Ledger your bank account compare the two do some reconciliation if you're be if you're a very active business or a very active side hustle yes this may take a little bit of time but if you buy the right tools like QuickBooks or some of these other tools they'll help you Auto reconcile with your bank accounts like Rob mentioned so these are just some of the things you can do for working in the business to make life a little bit easier now I'm not a huge fan like I said of always working in the business but we do need to so kind of check yourself and make sure that at least once a week maybe do a reminder and say hey have I reconciled my books have I sent those invoices have I followed up to make sure I got paid because the other thing you have to do is you need to make sure that those invoices you sent out that your customers are paying you you don't want to work for free you don't want to be five six invoices in on a customer and find out they're not paying you well why are you still doing the work for them so again this is just some of the things to do to help you kind of keep your books in order and keep your business running smoothly yeah I think there's some good examples there one is use template it is very helpful to use templates wherever possible you don't have to reinvent the wheel there have been a billion bills and invoices done over the years so just find find something that looks good for you and you don't need to get it super fancy but you can put something together like Michael said you can find a really good template put a logo on there you're off and running you don't have to worry about it ret tracking invoices and payments is very critical I still and I will have customers that I've had for a long time will regularly have stuff where I will send stuff out for example let's say I'm sending things out every two weeks but they I know from how they do stuff they roughly pay once a month there are times that I will look and I'll say okay this is what I'm expecting and they'll pay an invoice or two and there's an older invoice that didn't get hit and I'm like well wait a minute that to me is like a red flag that you didn't pay this older invoice so did it get lost and usually I'm I'm usually very helpful and say by the way here is that older invoice just to be sure and there are a lot of things where it's like like I've got one right now that I hate to call somebody out but literally gotta hey I'm putting the check in the mail today like a week ago and I haven't seen the check yet and so I'm gonna look and see what it comes in the mail tomorrow and if not if I don't see it I'm gonna be like hey you said the check is in the mail did that actually get into the mail because also now this is like one of those thing and this is actually I think sometimes a problem for your customer too is if you do this and like oh I didn't catch it and now they're like for this case now they've got two invoices and they're like you know there there's more that they need to put out right now to pay out than maybe they were expecting because maybe they weren't paying attention to what they needed to do as well obviously they weren't because normally they should expect that oh I'm going to pay $1,000 do out to this vendor let's say and if you don't that month usually are going to say hey did you forget to invoice me which I have seen that a couple of times before as well and you don't want to say oh yeah I forgot to invoice you because you just don't sound as professional you are better off I have found going through this stuff being follow up on it is do the regular follow-ups based follow-ups based on your agreements and things like that you don't have to hound them you don't have to like send them off to collections or send cousin veto over there to like you know smash their their kneecaps but you do want to stay on top of it and there is a point like Michael said and I have literally early on got into a situation where they kept saying yep we'll get it we'll get it we'll get it we'll get it we'll get it and I suddenly had three months of work that was not paid and I was like I have to stop I was like I love working for you guys I love the rate and everything else I was like but I can't afford to wait continue to wait for you guys to actually pay me and when they did it was all kinds of issues because I got all this money at once from you know three months and had to deal with everything so be sure that you're keeping on it that you're you know you're pushing with them and I was and so it's also have in the back of your mind like in some of those cases some sort of a a threshold it's like if I get to this point and they're still not an giving me the answers I need I.E a check or a payment into my account then you need to say hey we have gone beyond what I'm comfortable with and early on with a new customer particularly all just say I I'm sorry but trust but verify just I haven't worked with you nothing personal this is just business this is how we do it and follow that stuff up because yes as you get further in and you know a customer then it's a little easier and you just sort of things start to flow but early on you want to make sure that all of those things that you communicated are followed through on that being said one of the things that we have communicated over and over and over and over again is to send us an email at info@ developer please give us some feedback because especially now as we're wrapping up one season and we're going to go into the next season the next season is going to be regular nuggets of information and and action items and challenges and things like that to really build better developers to talk about how do we build better developers including ourselves there's a lot of these if not all of them that we will be part of these challenges that we are going to put out and these you know these Lessons Learned in these ways that we can better so we would love to have from you options to that as say what are some of your opinions what are some suggestions that you have particularly what are the some of the things that you do on a regular basis to keep yourself current or make yourself better because we all have them particularly as we get further into our careers once you get through those first few years where you're just drinking from a fire hose all the time there is that point where you're like okay I'm ready now to like control my own destiny a little bit and now you have to push yourself you have to go find the ways that you're going to grow to get to where you want to be that being said hang out with us and continue to grow with us to listen to this podcast to give us feedback wherever you can and we would love to hear from you as we're wrapping this one up but for now go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus material so one of the things you me mention which I think is kind of a really good bonus topic is you were talking about you know it took 3 months to finally get that check or payments in and then you had to go reconcile and everything for those of you just starting out or having a side hustle or just want to avoid fees one of the things that I have found recently is most banks now use or accept zilly pay where you can actually pay a customer or a an expense straight from your business account to a another customer's bank account so you don't even have to cut the check you literally can do an electronic transfer from your account to their account with no fees so that's one way to get paid sooner or pay some of your customers sooner without fees some of the other things is you can get a commercial account through your bank to accept credit cards at a low interest rate you can take Vimeo you can do um what we pay there are other apps out there to get payments quickly without having to to go through all the hoops and hoopla but at the end of the day you want to get paid for your skills so try to set up tools and reminders to help the process so if you send out an invoice and the customer gets it and they it's not due for 30 days so it may sit there for 30 days some apps like QuickBooks wave apps will allow you to set up send a reminder seven days before the payments due one day before the payments due one day after the payment and so on what's cool about those is they'll also send it to your email so you'll get a notification as well oh hey you haven't been paid yet follow up with the customer so use software and automation to help streamline these tools to quick things um one is take a look when you get paid you will get paid different ways and take a look at when you do get paid because some of these are using Services much like Michael referred to a lot of them the way they're set up is that you can get paid in you know 5 days or a week whatever the full amount is or you can you can pay a fee and get it immediately and you don't want to you know get it you don't want to do the get it immediately because it's going to cost yeah it's usually going to be like 1% which is not a lot but it's something to note that if you are pressed for cash or you know you get into a cash flow issue or something like that with your business then a lot of times there is an option to pull it in a little bit faster so that you can pay your bills the other thing is when you're sending when you're sending bills when you're sending invoices a way that I found is really good is I've talked before about doing regular statuses I do a weekly status typically I bill every other week which works out great because what happens is that Weekly status will go hit their email and then basically five minutes later I will send the invoice for the last couple of weeks and say Hey by the way here's your latest invoice and or here's your latest invoice and the three others you haven't paid yet let me know if you have any questions blah blah blah you know that kind of stuff have a good week you know it's that kind of stuff here's a bill enjoy your week so do you can always like you know sort of put good news and bad news together in that little you know in a couple of emails I would not oh rap sort of a follow-up to that do not put the invoice if you if you have something like that where you're emailing communication do a separate email for the invoice it is way too easy if you include it with something else that it gets put somewhere it doesn't it gets lost or something like that always do a separate email and if you have to follow up you can go back and do a reply with that or a forward or whatever you need to from that email and that will help you out quite a bit what will also help you out quite a bit is US wrapping this one up so we're going to wrap up this episode we will come back next time it will actually be our pin ultimate I think it is pin ultimate uh episode because we're going to do that one and we're going to come up with the season wrap up and then we will jump into season 23 so crazy I'm still like a little bit like rocked by that it's like that's a lot like I said that's like I think that's 10 twice the the 10 episodes that most podcasts last in Seasons not in episodes so go out there and have yourself a good one as always leave us comments leave us you know email for uh contact us form out at RB at developin or.com obviously I've it's gone on too long so go have yourself a good one and we'll talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
cloud and here we are as I'm aligning
all of my stuff up so I can sort of look
at the camera gosh I got like all kinds
of I'm a little glowy today this is like
pretty cool I guess Angelic let's see
let's swing that mic there do that how
do everybody what was that mute your
notifications mute my notifications yes
because those things drive me nuts it
said let's see let's make it sure okay
wow I had my I've had my do not disturb
this is interesting I've had my do not
disturb on I think since the last time
we met and yet I still get stuff
so ah let's see let's try for one hour
let's try that or maybe it just oh I
think what I did is it
just we're gonna find out I don't think
I think I gotta work on that because I
think my notifications are coming in
when they shouldn't and I gotta go
figure out what it what is overright
yeah do not disturb on okay we're going
to find out if if you hear a bunch of
beeps I'll cuss we may edit it out we
may not I can't I don't know did you
edit that out last time or did we keep
that in no I took
it it was a little longer than I liked
so I just ch chopped it so you guys
missed out there you go you missed out
on some really good like behind the
scenes stuff but oh well actually so did
the podcast people because that was I
think we would have it was right in the
middle of that side of it all right so
we are getting down to the end of this
season so let's say we've got basically
got two more topics we want to cover
before we wrap this sucker up do we have
something we
haven't thrown out yet that we want to
um let's see is there anything you have
off the top of your head while we're I'm
digging a little bit
here let's see
I don't think taxes are a good one
because this is the developer Journey
not the business setting up a
business had lots of tax questions this
week I was uh reconciling my
books now that you know what that
actually would be sort of
a I don't think tax questions but we
could
[Music]
do
um like keeping track of your business
basically that could like you know
accounting types of things and stuff
like that working on your business not
in your business this is really on your
business well this is actually like this
is this is like working on your business
but this is actually behind the scenes
because working on your business I
typically think of as more like uh
marketing and stuff like this um this is
a little bit this is working in the
business but behind the scenes this is a
non-billable working in the business so
it's the things like accounting and
actually I think accounting invoicing
and billing because I don't think we've
really talked about
that um I'm sorry this go well with the
pricing one we did so yeah I like that
so let's yeah because I don't think
we've actually talked about the actual
invoicing side of it or anything like
that and and I know we've talked about
pricing but we didn't really get into
that so let's go with invoicing for this
one or invo we'll go into accounting and
we'll hope people don't fall asleep and
we'll see how that goes so all right
that's where we're going to start with
do I want to now I'll go I was trying to
St I wanted to grab a hat real quick but
because I'm like shining a little too
much a little too little too Holy Roller
right now with this little this nice
little bright glow going on so you guys
get the special version this time well
hello and welcome back we are continuing
the developer Journey we are building
better developers it is developing newer
we are cranking through this season
almost there I happen to be Rob
Broadhead one of the founders of
developing building better developers
also a founder of RB Consulting where we
do software Consulting business
Consulting we look at ways to simplify
automate and integrate your systems so
that your technology sprawl and all of
the related pain can be removed and
reduced as you get a nice you know
instead of being in that stinky smelly
car going down the road that's about to
fall apart we're going to put that stuff
back together and get you in that like
you know F1 Formula racer kind of thing
good thing bad bad thing uh let's see
thing I think I wow I'm trying to think
out if I I've talked about this last
time oh so get I'll start with the good
one and then I'll just flip into good
thing and you guys can look into this
there's a whole bunch of stuff my son's
giv me some information there's a bunch
of stuff going around there's stuff
dealing with Adobe and their uh Creative
Cloud and some of their subscriptions
and stuff like that well one of the
things that I got the other day was
something that said hey we can you can
flip your subscription which I happen to
have been a subscriber for a long time
for a bunch of different stuff
like hey you can flip your subscription
to this other thing that's 50% less and
it's actually it's not quite the same
stuff that was the other one had but
it's a it's actually a better fit to me
I was actually just digging I was just
looking you know the other day I was
starting to look through that a little
bit and say ah there's a lot of stuff I
don't use so good thing is I get what I
need essentially all the same stuff I
need for half the price each month bad
thing along the same lines is I've been
doing some Financial straightening stuff
out and things like that and uh there's
like it's one of those it's like
automation is really nice for financial
stuff it's just like pay your bills
online do this do that just don't even
think about it it is also a real pain
when you let it just go for too long and
now you got to like roll it all back and
clean it all up and figure out how you
had I literally am financially
technology sprawl I have too many places
too many things going on all these
little deals I took advantage of and all
this crap that is now it's like it
wasn't probably worth the deal so it's
like no simplify it all right back
integrate stuff I'm going to get like
you know nice little pipeline of money
coming in money going out so I don't
have to look a thousand different places
so there's some good and some bad right
there and it may actually have something
to do with our topic today but I'm gonna
hold on because I want you guys hold
your breath and let Michael introduce
himself go for
it hey everyone my name is mikaeel Mage
I'm one of the co-founders of developer
ner building other developers I'm also
the founder of Envision QA where we help
small to midsize businesses analyze
their software stack look at what their
business needs are and build the right
software tool for their needs good and
bad this week uh the I'll start with the
bad went out bought some TV antennas
because my wife loves NASCAR and uh
Infinity Series has decided to move
everything over to CW which is only
available over the air or on Hulu live
um
could not get that to work so spent $300
per antennas had to take it all back and
then had to go subscribe for Hulu live
uh tried YouTube TV and found out we're
in the zone that is blacked out for
YouTube TV the only source was Hulu live
so my TV build just doubled again uh
gota love this uh the good is I've been
using this free financial tool called
wave apps for many many years to do my
financial bookkeeping for my company
books recently they changed their tears
and things got a little funky today I
figured out how to get everything the
way I wanted it like I used to so now
I'm able to continue to use the tool did
not have to go buy QuickBooks thank God
uh and I'm back to reconciling my books
which kind of leads into our topic today
wow we both had these you
know you know a little bit of a spoiler
alert or whatever but now we don't have
to worry about spoiling it because now
it ish we're serving this right on front
in front of everybody on the table we're
going to talk about the accounting side
of your side hustle of your business
really going to get we've talked about
pricing which is really not the
accounting side we're going to talk
about invoicing and billing and some of
those kinds of things now Michael let us
he'll give me like a nice little starter
thing was he mentioned the the qword
QuickBooks whether you use QuickBooks or
F books or all the other tools out there
the first thing is i' highly highly
highly recommend that you pick a a tool
that you used for your side hustle for
keeping track of all of your
transactions separate from just like
we've mentioned before you should have
when you're starting a business have a
separate account there should be a
straight business account period that's
like it's not your extra checkin account
or your other savings account or a
credit card that you're just like I'm
just going to call that my business
expenses now maybe you put your business
expenses on that but there should be
somewhere a checking account literally a
checking account that is tied to your
business that you drive everything
through
that that is going to be key now as part
of that you should have a some sort of
accounting software that you can use
that is tied to that or that tracks that
so you can I don't know keep track of
your bottom line but also what you're
going to need depending on where you're
at at the very least you're going to
need to be able to some sort sort of
billing and invoicing some sort of
reports related to that reports related
to your income and expense your your
your final year stuff filing taxes
potentially quarterly taxes if you need
to do that and maybe even payroll so
find a tool that is comfortable for you
like Michael said he's like he has been
in Wave Accounting forever and to change
that would be a pain not only for him as
a US user but also because then he's got
to move all the data and make sure that
it moves right and all that kind of crap
nobody trust me you don't want to have
to jump to a whole different system
really ever and in any situation this is
like across the board basically
something you don't want to do it's it's
not pretty so when you look at a tool
take a look at where it can grow because
that's something you don't want to jump
into and a lot of people do this they
jump into some like you know free little
app that does something super simple for
them and it's cheap or like I said cheap
or free like okay cool this will cover
me right now and then six months or a
year from now it doesn't cover them
anymore because now suddenly instead of
something that only you know that is
great for having five customers doesn't
work when you have 500 customers or it
doesn't expand to having to track
expenses from different places or the
number of venders that you have or or
the it gets into like I don't want you
guys to fall asleep talking about
accounting stuff but like
classifications and things like that
that you have to worry about including
one of the big things you're going to
find across the board is does it have
any integration with you know electronic
integration with like your bank accounts
or other places like that including
electronic filing of taxes which is
required in some cases and in some
certain places so the other piece is the
ability to calculate or file taxes for
you and this is not just your year in
taxes it could be at other levels and
then payroll is another big thing
actually the fourth big thing that is
probably more important than all of
those that a lot of these tools have
some uh they will work with you on it is
the ability to actually take payments
now you may have a square account or
something like that where you can run
everything through it but there are
accounting software options out there
where they also have either directly or
as part of an add-on the ability to take
payments whether it's you know through
like credit cards or some I think even
have the ability to set up a and some
things like that so that's something you
need to think about I want us before I
pass it over the mic though I also want
to talk about the billing and invoicing
side of it we've talked about rates this
is
about frequency and
professionalism now you can charge
whatever it is let's just say you're you
you're a nice little developer and you
charge 50 bucks an hour and we're GNA
we'll take two different let's say you
you're charging 50 bucks an hour and at
the end of a week you did 20 hours of
work and you want to go Bill them for
the Thousand or 20 time 5050 is a th000
just quick math three people or let's
say that you had a thousand project that
you build them for like hey I I we
agreed it's going to be a thousand
project boom I'm going to go ahead and
bill you for it now we have mentioned uh
upwork and Guru and some of these other
sites they a lot of times will help you
with that piece of it they do include in
their offerings and things like that
sometimes a level of invoice in and
billing and things of that nature so
this may you may be able to take that
off the table but let's assume for this
for this exercise that you haven't that
you actually do need to send an invoice
and I have had people work for me at
times where it has been like pulling
teeth to get them to send me an invoice
so I can say yes this is the work that
came in and I can tie it to a check
because I actually have proper
accounting principles of some sort as
much as I can being not an encounter so
what you will need to do sometimes
you'll do things like POS and things
like that so talk to your customer you
should always have something and you you
may be asked by the qu customer how do
you handle billing so with that question
it's going to be how frequently do you
send one do you s do you send them an
invoice every month do you send them
every week every two weeks bi-weekly
15th in the end of the month whatever
and a lot of times that is it's up to
you it's how you build now realize that
if you wanted to build
every week they may or may not pay those
off every week they may just like you
know a month later pay off three of them
at once and you get a check and you have
to go back and track all of those so the
B the granularity of your billing is how
you do stuff and they just need to know
that hey I'm going to send you an
invoice every so these on this
schedule and then follow up it's just
like we talked about podcasts and blogs
and things like that you like you need
to be scheduled now you don't have to
send it at 5:00 a.m. every Tuesday or
something like that but what you do need
to do is do it like if you say it's
every other week and I send it to end of
the week every other week you need to
make sure that you send it the end of
the week every other week that that they
need to understand when to expect it and
then as part of that there's also like
what are the terms which are basically
how soon do you expect that to be paid
which is critical because if you don't
mention anything you don't know you're
it's up to that customer and it could be
some places will wait 90 days or more to
pay a bill that may be a problem for you
particularly if this is more than a side
hustle and you need to like put food on
your table now it can go as low as like
some places like immediately or you know
maybe seven days later or two within two
weeks or something like that make sure
you were clear on all of those kinds of
things this thing these things I'm
talking about like how often you going
to Bill them what is the expectation for
payments and make sure that you are
clear on that before you go into
especially a longer term kind of project
it's a oneandone it's probably not going
to be as big a deal but it could be and
definitely if it's going to be something
where you're going to get into a three
or six or 12 month agreement make sure
that you are very clear on that I will
pause there and pass it over to Mike and
see what are your thoughts on this and
maybe questions and and some you know
hints that you may have for
people yeah so I know I initially in our
introduction started talking about the
QuickBooks and waves there are other
ways you can keep track of your books
even if you're just starting out you
need to record everything so when I went
through the whole rebranding process and
relaunching process I actually was
having to keep two separate books
because I still had the old company that
was being phased out and had to reset
and create a new Ledger for the new
company except since the new company
didn't exist yet it really didn't make
sense to go out and spend a lot of money
on expensive software to set up a new
Ledger
ironically typically all a ledger is is
a spreadsheet so you can go get open
Office lead braate if you have Excel use
Excel just keep track of the what you're
spending what's coming in what's going
out initially and then as you need to
evolve the business you move into other
applications like wave apps or you know
free books QuickBooks
whatever as you're going through this
process like Rob mentioned you know we
also want to invoice our customers we
want to send out those nice pretty
invoices well what he didn't mention is
yes you can go get those other tools but
here again you can use free tools for
the process tools like Pages uh word
open Office a lot of these have good
free templates for invoicing just go hey
find a template I want invoices and then
go pick one that works for you and just
drop it in there add a logo you're done
minutes worth of time does not take that
long it may seem daunting at first but
once you get it done right it's pretty
much copy paste move on but make sure
you record those payments into your
Ledger you don't want to not get paid on
top of that though as you're going
through this process of working the
business you need to keep track of those
bank accounts you want to make sure you
reconcile your income and your expenses
with your Ledger cuz sometimes you may
have those odd payments like I did
initially where everything was on a
personal credit card because the
business account didn't exist yet I was
still going through the process of
getting the LLC the escorp so I didn't
really have the tax ID and all that to
go just go set up up business account
well also and lesson learn is I got
hacked again a month ago on my business
account for some strange reason because
I don't use the card for
anything use you you want a credit card
or a business card to charge those ex
external expenses to because if
something does happen you don't want to
tie up your physical money while you're
trying to reconcile any grievances or
misch charges so you do still need to
keep track of where are you spending
money outside of your business checking
because if you don't and you don't see
it on your Ledger you're going to forget
to put it in there and not pay yourself
so you're going to go pay for something
and not get
deducted ran into that in recently
because I had those weird charges I had
to go literally like Rob mention with
his subscriptions I had to go through a
whole bunch of different websites to say
okay did I buy this did I buy
this I had it all written down but it's
like where did these weird charges come
from ultimately they weren't mine um so
it's one of those things it it's tedious
but if you stay on top of this it's
going to be easy year now the bad thing
I
did and you know a lot of business
owners do this we are reluctant to work
in the business a lot it's because
really working on the business you know
that's where we get paid that's where we
make the money working in the business
we're not really getting paid we're not
we we're doing things that we don't feel
is as productive because we're not
getting paid for but it does make a
difference because if you aren't keeping
an eye on those accounts something weird
like a miscellaneous charge could come
in and then you don't catch it well
someone could essentially come in drain
your account and then you're like whoa
what happened um so kind of following up
on your accounts at least once a week
don't necessarily have to do it daily
but I find at least once a week take a
snapshot of your Ledger your bank
account compare the two do some
reconciliation if you're be if you're a
very active business or a very active
side hustle yes this may take a little
bit of time
but if you buy the right tools like
QuickBooks or some of these other tools
they'll help you Auto reconcile with
your bank accounts like Rob
mentioned so these are just some of the
things you can do for working in the
business to make life a little bit
easier
now I'm not a huge fan like I said of
always working in the business but we do
need to
so kind of check yourself and make sure
that at least once a week maybe do a
reminder and say hey have I reconciled
my books have I sent those invoices have
I followed up to make sure I got paid
because the other thing you have to do
is you need to make sure that those
invoices you sent out that your
customers are paying you you don't want
to work for free you don't want to be
five six invoices in on a customer and
find out they're not paying you well why
are you still doing the work for them so
again this is just some of the things to
do to help you kind of keep your books
in order and keep your business running
smoothly
yeah I think there's some good examples
there one is use template it is very
helpful to use templates wherever
possible you don't have to reinvent the
wheel there have been a billion bills
and invoices done over the years so just
find find something that looks good for
you and you don't need to get it super
fancy but you can put something together
like Michael said you can find a really
good template put a logo on there you're
off and running you don't have to worry
about
it ret tracking invoices and payments is
very critical I still and I will have
customers that I've had for a long time
will regularly have stuff where I will
send stuff out for example let's say I'm
sending things out every two weeks but
they I know from how they do stuff they
roughly pay once a month there are times
that I will look and I'll say okay this
is what I'm expecting and they'll pay an
invoice or two and there's an older
invoice that didn't get hit and I'm like
well wait a minute that to me is like a
red flag that you didn't pay this older
invoice so did it get lost and usually
I'm I'm usually very helpful and say by
the way here is that older invoice just
to be sure and there are a lot of things
where it's like like I've got one right
now that I hate to call somebody out but
literally gotta hey I'm putting the
check in the mail today like a week ago
and I haven't seen the check yet and so
I'm gonna look and see what it comes in
the mail tomorrow and if not if I don't
see it I'm gonna be like hey you said
the check is in the mail did that
actually get into the mail because also
now this is like one of those thing and
this is actually I think sometimes a
problem for your customer too is if you
do this and like oh I didn't catch it
and now they're like for this case now
they've got two invoices and they're
like you know there there's more that
they need to put out right now to pay
out than maybe they were expecting
because maybe they weren't paying
attention to what they needed to do as
well obviously they weren't because
normally they should expect that oh I'm
going to pay $1,000 do out to this
vendor let's say and if you don't that
month usually are going to say hey did
you forget to invoice me which I have
seen that a couple of times before as
well and you don't want to say oh yeah I
forgot to invoice you because you just
don't sound as professional you are
better off I have found going through
this stuff being follow up on it is do
the regular follow-ups based follow-ups
based on your agreements and things like
that you don't have to hound them you
don't have to like send them off to
collections or send cousin veto over
there to like you know smash their their
kneecaps but you do want to stay on top
of it and there is a point like Michael
said and I have literally early on got
into a situation where they kept saying
yep we'll get it we'll get it we'll get
it we'll get it we'll get it and I
suddenly had three months of work that
was not paid and I was like I have to
stop I was like I love working for you
guys I love the rate and everything else
I was like but I can't afford to wait
continue to wait for you guys to
actually pay me and when they did it was
all kinds of issues because I got all
this money at once from you know three
months and had to deal with everything
so be sure that you're keeping on it
that you're you know you're pushing with
them and I was and so it's also have in
the back of your mind like in some of
those cases some sort of a a threshold
it's like if I get to this point and
they're still not an giving me the
answers I need I.E a check or a payment
into my account then you need to say hey
we have gone beyond what I'm comfortable
with and early on with a new customer
particularly all just say I I'm sorry
but trust but verify just I haven't
worked with you nothing personal this is
just business this is how we do it and
follow that stuff up because yes as you
get further in and you know a customer
then it's a little easier and you just
sort of things start to flow but early
on you want to make sure that all of
those things that you communicated are
followed through
on that being said one of the things
that we have communicated over and over
and over and over again is to send us an
email at info@ developer
please give us some feedback because
especially now as we're wrapping up one
season and we're going to go into the
next season the next season is going to
be regular nuggets of information and
and action items and challenges and
things like that to really build better
developers to talk about how do we build
better developers including ourselves
there's a lot of these if not all of
them that we will be part of these
challenges that we are going to put out
and these you know these Lessons Learned
in these ways that we can better so we
would love to have from you options to
that as say what are some of your
opinions what are some suggestions that
you have particularly what are the some
of the things that you do on a regular
basis to keep yourself current or make
yourself better because we all have them
particularly as we get further into our
careers once you get through those first
few years where you're just drinking
from a fire hose all the time there is
that point where you're like okay I'm
ready now to like control my own destiny
a little bit and now you have to push
yourself you have to go find the ways
that you're going to grow to get to
where you want to be that being said
hang out with us and continue to grow
with us to listen to this podcast to
give us feedback wherever you can and we
would love to hear from you as we're
wrapping this one up but for now go out
there and have yourself a great day a
great week and we will talk to you next
time bonus
material so one of the things you me
mention which I think is kind of a
really good bonus topic is you were
talking about you know it took 3 months
to finally get that check or payments in
and then you had to go reconcile and
everything for those of you just
starting out or having a side hustle or
just want to avoid fees one of the
things that I have found recently is
most banks now use or accept zilly pay
where you can actually pay a customer or
a an expense straight from your business
account to a another customer's bank
account so you don't even have to cut
the check you literally can do an
electronic transfer from your account to
their account with no fees so that's one
way to get paid sooner or pay some of
your customers sooner without fees some
of the other things is you can get a
commercial account through your bank to
accept credit cards at a low interest
rate you can take Vimeo you can do um
what we pay there are other apps out
there to get payments quickly without
having to to go through all the hoops
and hoopla but at the end of the day you
want to get paid for your skills so try
to set up tools and reminders to help
the process so if you send out an
invoice and the customer gets it and
they it's not due for 30 days so it may
sit there for 30 days some apps like
QuickBooks wave apps will allow you to
set up send a reminder seven days before
the payments due one day before the
payments due one day after the payment
and so on what's cool about those is
they'll also send it to your email so
you'll get a notification as well oh hey
you haven't been paid yet follow up with
the customer so use software and
automation to help streamline these
tools to quick things um one
is take a look when you get paid you
will get paid different ways and take a
look at when you do get paid because
some of these are using Services much
like Michael referred to a lot of them
the way they're set up is that you can
get paid in you know 5 days or a
week whatever the full amount is or you
can you can pay a fee and get it
immediately and you don't want to you
know get it you don't want to do the get
it immediately because it's going to
cost yeah it's usually going to be like
1% which is not a lot but it's something
to note that if you are pressed for cash
or you know you get into a cash flow
issue or something like that with your
business then a lot of times there is an
option to pull it in a little bit faster
so that you can pay your
bills the other thing is when you're
sending when you're sending bills when
you're sending
invoices a way that I found is really
good is I've talked before about doing
regular statuses I do a weekly status
typically I bill every other week which
works out great because what happens is
that Weekly status will go hit their
email and then basically five minutes
later I will send the invoice for the
last couple of weeks and say Hey by the
way here's your latest invoice and or
here's your latest invoice and the three
others you haven't paid yet let me know
if you have any questions blah blah blah
you know that kind of stuff have a good
week you know it's that kind of stuff
here's a bill enjoy your week so do you
can always like you know sort of put
good news and bad news together in that
little you know in a couple of emails I
would not oh rap sort of a follow-up to
that do not put the invoice if you if
you have something like that where
you're emailing
communication do a separate email for
the invoice it is way too easy if you
include it with something else that it
gets put somewhere it doesn't it gets
lost or something like that always do a
separate email and if you have to follow
up you can go back and do a reply with
that or a forward or whatever you need
to from that email and that will help
you out quite a bit what will also help
you out quite a bit is US wrapping this
one up so we're going to wrap up this
episode we will come back next time it
will actually be our pin ultimate I
think it is pin ultimate uh episode
because we're going to do that one and
we're going to come up with the season
wrap up and then we will jump into
season
23 so crazy I'm still like a little bit
like rocked by that it's like that's a
lot like I said that's like I think
that's 10 twice the the 10 episodes that
most podcasts last in Seasons not in
episodes so go out there and have
yourself a good one as always leave us
comments leave us you know email for uh
contact us form out at RB at developin
or.com obviously I've it's gone on too
long so go have yourself a good one and
we'll talk to you next time
[Music]