This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Collecting money from customers used to be simple. You would accept a single PayPal payment, for example, and call it a day. Or if you had a retail business, you might take cash. But now we've got Stripe for subscriptions. We've got Gumroad, Etsy, eBay, all these different deposits that arrive on certain days. You've got Venmo,
maybe some Zelle payments, maybe all kinds of different sources might be different for you. When you're trying to reconcile all these revenue streams or manage the cash flow, it can just be a little bit of a pain point. And that's what today's caller is wondering about. A lot of modern creators are noticing like they've got some good revenue, but the visibility is down. Money's coming into different slots, accounts, silos, et cetera, each with its own fee structure and payout schedule. Some of these platforms might hold
on to the money for a while before paying you. So what can we do about this? Is there anything we can do? So I'm going to give you a little system to help keep cash flow clear and tax time painless or at least let's say less pain. I don't want to say it's painless because taxes are frustrating. But let's try to manage it a little bit and give you something that's helpful,
detailed question and my answer coming up. Hello, this is Rico calling for the first time. My side hustle brings in money from half a dozen places. PayPal for digital downloads, Stripe for course payments, Venmo for one-off consulting and Etsy deposits for physical products. It's turning into a bookkeeping nightmare.
What's the smartest way to keep track of cash flow when the money lands in so many different platforms? I need a streamlined system before tax season turns into a disaster. All right, so before we get into this streamlined system, by request, let me just make a quick little disclaimer. It doesn't actually have to be complicated. You can just decide, okay, I only want to take one form of payment or two forms of payment. And yes, in some ways,
that means you might be making things harder for a potential customer. But you also don't have to give in to every possible new thing. So if it's easier for you to just do it one way or two ways, then there's nothing wrong with that. You can make that choice. Now, let's assume just for the sake of question that this caller or anybody else in the situation does want to keep using all these different systems and platforms and such, but it's becoming a bookkeeping nightmare as we heard.
Here's what I'd suggest, layer one, a one landing zone business account, a dedicated business checking account, no personal spending. And then you turn on auto sweep. That's what it's called. Auto sweep in every wallet, PayPal, Venmo, stripe balance, et cetera. So that the funds go into that account daily or weekly at the most. Now you've got one unified feed for bookkeeping, even if
the money is coming in somewhere else. And layer two is an automated bookkeeping software. Wave, QuickBooks, zero. These are all either free or low cost solutions. They all integrate with major banks. So that's key, the automated integration. And then that integration and automation can
then essentially do the bookkeeping for you, which is great. Layer three, tag and track the source data. So in each of those platforms, add a little prefix to your payout memo. It might say something like Etsy 2025 or Venmo dash consult. And the banks usually pass these memos through. So now
your accounting tool can auto tag everything that comes in by income stream. That helps a ton. And then here's the only manual work, layer four, a weekly reconciliation ritual. You might be able to get away with doing it on a monthly basis, but either way, 30 minutes, confirm your payouts, all made it in, match any high ticket invoices to deposits, review fees and chargebacks. You want to make sure you catch any surprises and then transfer your weekly net income to a separate tax savings account. Usually at least 30%. I do that all the time. There's some integrations
that can help with this Zapier, PayPal and QuickBooks work well together. I'm sure there are others, but basically you want to set up an account to take all the money in. You want to set up some automated bookkeeping software, tag that data. And then every so often, weekly, monthly, you look at it and make sure all as well. There's still some work to it of course, but this will make it a lot easier. I am wishing you well. I know it's a challenge. Hang in there
and listeners, let me know how I can be of service, how we here at the podcast can be of service to sidehustleschool.com, resources, pages, notes, email lists, all kinds of good stuff. And of course new episodes every day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. You are listening to Side Hustle School. From The Onward Project.
