How To Track Your Writing Income

January 11, 2008

If you do a lot of writing, then it’s essential to get organized. Planning is very important, but tracking is equally important. Someone asked me the other day how I kept track of my writing life.

I’m not a spreadsheet wizard, but Excel is the best way to keep track of all the pieces. What I normally do is think about what I need to include, then ask someone who knows their way around Excel to create it for me. After that, I tweak it. Between us, we come up with something that works very well. So, what’s included in my spreadsheet.

A New System

This year, I have changed my main tracking from an invoice number system (where I kept track of jobs by the invoices I sent) to a job numbering system. Each job I accept, whether for me or my writing team, is allocated a number, starting at 2008–001.

Project Management

The next column, titled Project, is where I describe the job in brief. I also used to have a column titled client, so I could track who I was working for, but I found I never needed to refer to it, so now I just include the client’s initials in the project column.

Deadline Tracking

Next is a column for the writer (only necessary because I sometimes outsource and need to know who to chase), followed by several columns for dates — the client’s deadline, the deadline I give the writer (if it’s different) and the date the job is sent to the client. I try to be rigorous in filling out this column as I want to be certain that I’ve done the job and submitted it if there’s a client query.

Getting Paid

The next few columns are for keeping track of invoicing and payment. Column titles are Invoiced client, invoice number, writer invoice received, writer paid. Then I have a section for the payment. There’s a payment amount column, a writer payment amount column and a commission column for the jobs I pass on. Finally, I track the date that payment is received.

Reviewing The Process

This is still a work in progress. At the end of each year — and sometimes during the year — I review the sheet to see how I am using it and what I need to change. I have the sense that this may be the final version, unless I get any good tips as a result of writing this post.

Finally, there’s another sheet in my spreadsheet which I use to track my monthly income. That just has the date, job and amount, with a total at the end of each month. I also (when I remember) track cash flow, but I think I might do that more easily in the first sheet, as all the figures are there anyway.

Inspire yourself to do more writing or read this great post on kickstarting your writing career.