I’ve decided to stop wasting time sitting around, fretting about finding work and put some effort back into that little art novelty side business I had started and then put aside. I will put a few hours this weekend searching for jobs up and down my entire state, but also I will start building an inventory in excel for the little art side business I started.
I had quit trying to promote it because I got busy with my employed work and then I got pneumonia and now I’m just in between jobs. Might as well build an inventory of what products/original paintings I have on hand for quick sale, with a cost of production, cost of time and skill, and customer price listed in the spreadsheet for everything I have.
On the off-chance a customer runs across something on my social media accounts they like and seek another quote, I won’t be like uhhh welll ummmm let me get back to you on that…again, like the last time a customer wanted to buy a painting from me at an art show. Now, if I get through all the inventory (I’m like 5 products deep right now), I can have an exact value AND a justification for that price, as I broke the cost of production into a few parts: cost of physical materials i.e. cost of canvas, etc, plus time and effort i.e. said painting took 3 hour to complete versus a 1 hour painting, and miscellaneous fees like shipping cost for the stuff.
It looks kind of like this:
Inventory ------------------------------ -----------cost per greeting card+shipping----------------MISC.-------etc…
10 greeting cards of my painting --------------------------------------2.10----------------------------------shipping 4.99
but cooler, because it’s in excel! Anybody use other software to keep tabs of business expenses?