Playing gigs, selling merchandise and earning income as a musician is undoubtedly rewarding, converting a home or bedroom hobby into a more life changing activity. So it's essential to have a clear system in place for tracking your payments, one which is easy and quick to use. Accurate recording keeping of payments serves several other vital purposes:
Ensure you are getting paid, especially if there is a lead-time for the payment transactions to complete.
Making informed decisions about budgeting, investing in new equipment, or allocating funds for other business-related needs.
Tax Compliance: Keeping accurate records of your payments enables you to meet your tax obligations effectively. It provides you with the necessary documentation to report your earnings accurately and claim any eligible business expenses, ultimately helping you maximise tax deductions. It’s best to check with your local authority and tax consultant.
Professionalism: Maintaining a systematic approach to payment tracking showcases your professionalism as a musician. It instils confidence in clients and establishes a level of trust and transparency in your business transactions.
This book has a super simple payment tracker table for you to use on-the-fly. Simply add the date of payment, the amount, who paid you, the services or product they’re paying you for and the payment method and whether the payment is completed.
What, no bookings tracker?
A log for your bookings is one of the sections I cut from the book for practical size reasons as I believe the smart mobile calendars would be better suited since it helps with scheduling and be something you can share with others easily.
However, you could still use this Payments Tracker section to oversee your gig bookings too, using any markings on the side to denote if the gig went ahead and confirm you received payment. It's kind of the advantage of a physical notebook, you can write whatever you need onto every page.
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