Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Jessie Shaw | Episode 1017
Jessie Shaw is a New York based potter specializing in functional kitchen items. Jessie’s forms tend to be simple with glaze adding the interest to the piece. Jessie learned pottery when She was in middle school. Jessie took a break when she went into college and now is back at it, full force.
SPONSORS
You can help support the show!
GRPotteryForms.com
Number 1 brand in America for a reason. Skutt.com
For all your ceramic needs go to Georgies.com
Why is bookkeeping so important?
So first and foremost as an accountant it helps you at the end of the year when you need to file your taxes. Because otherwise you are just going to have a mess and you won’t know what to do. And number two it helps you understand your income and your expenses and then your net profit, which is super important. You have to know if you are actually making a profit.
As potters what should we be doing on a regular basis? What should we be doing daily?
I don’t think there is anything you should be doing daily but maybe weekly and definitely monthly. If you have enough activity going on in your business having something like Quickbooks online is going to be super helpful and connecting a bank account that you have used just for business expenses and income will be super helpful. In Quickbooks you are going to be categorizing those transactions and then looking at your profit and loss would be super helpful.
Is it critical to also keep track of cash sales?
If you are making cash sales or someone Venmo’d you for a mug you need to be recording that and keeping track of that. And if you ever get audited it might get hairy. Of course no one wants to record cash sales, you just want to sneak it in and pay your lunch the next day with it but the laws are you need to be reporting that income. So you do need to be keeping track of that.
Does that honesty make a big difference? Like when you are trying to get a business loan. etc?
Definitely. If you are going to markets and most of your sales are in cash that people are giving you and you are not recording that cash at the end of the year and you don’t have much of a profit and you might even have a loss, showing that on your tax return is not going to help get a business loan or even a personal loan. Recording your income is going to open up opportunities for you so it’s very important.
Can you write off your phone and advertising costs off?
So it’s going to be a person by person type of thing. And if you have a cell phone that you use for personal use and business use doing something like splitting that bill and figuring out how much you use it for business, yes, you can one hundred percent write that off. Because you would not be able to run your business without your phone.
Is it important to have a business bank account that you pay yourself out of into a personal bank account so that you have them completely separate?
Yes, now this also depends on…say you are a sole proprietor or an LLC it’s going to be a little bit different. Depending if you get put on payroll or not. But yes, separate bank accounts to record all your business expenses. That keeps everything very crystal clear and if you ever get audited there’s no question if it is personal or is it business because everything in that account is business.
Is it important to have a professional look at your books at the end of the year or quarterly? Would that be a smart investment?
Yeah, so as an artist if bookkeeping is not your strong suit and you are just lost and busy making art and you cannot handle that it would be very smart to hire a bookkeeper to do that monthly for you. But if you want to do it yourself and save a little bit of money it would be very smart to give it to an accountant at year or end or even quarterly to make sure you are on the right track and answer any of your questions.
For an artist what is the best type of business to set up? Sole Proprietorship? LLC? S Corp? What’s the best? And what did you set up for yourself?
Interesting question. So it’s going to depend on where your business is at. But to start a sole proprietorship is the way to go or an LLC. Getting into corporations is…if you have a booming business and you have employees and you’ve got a lot going on you might want to think about a corporation. I set up a sole proprietorship for myself, I am very small.
Book
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
Contact
Etsy: modernfirepottery
Instagram: @modernfirepottery