small business - monthly financial assessment - how?

zippie

Hi
I am a lone operator
I need to start keeping a closer eye on finances - income, outgoings, etc. I want to do a monthly financial statement, where I just use something like a simple Excel Spreadsheet to tot up incomings on one side, outgoings on the other, rather than an actual piece of software.

What do other freelancers/lone operators use to do this? I really haven't a clue. I have done a search for simple basic free Excel templates, but nothing really suitable has come up. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

G-CBHV

I've seen sole traders using Excel before but you need to be very careful, When you change something in Excel it doesnt leave an audit trail like a good accountancy package. One lad I did some work for had all his accounts in Excel. He would often find mistakes in his accounts and go back and change the Excel sheet so when he was subject of a VAT audit his accounts did not match the vat he had submitted to the revenue.

If you are using Excel be very careful with changing things already submitted

the1andonly1

GNUCash is a good alternative to excel, only started using it recently, but it does the trick.