Machi de Waard

Monday morning and it's sunny. How odd. It is cold, though, below 10C according to my not very accurate thermometer. It's usually saying it's about 5 degrees warmer than it actually is.
Anyway....so on Saturday I went to the Slough council and Business Link organised course "cash flow basics". It was, thankfully, very useful. The course took about 4 hours and could have *easily* been condensed into less than an hour. I think they were just trying to make it a day seminar, but it's not a huge topic. Since it was free, of the ten people who were supposed to attend, 4 did. When it's free, people decide at the last minute whether they are going to attend or not, in my experience. Apparently this was a pilot run though, so next time they will charge a bit.
The course was held in a fairly grim area of Slough, lots of boarded up houses and so on. But oh well, I didn't have to walk there in the dark so it was ok. At least it was walking distance from the train station.
So, the useful things I learned were:
1. how to set up a cash flow spreadsheet
2. Inland Revenue does free courses on how to do your tax self assessment and what can be deducted as business costs
3. Simplex D is an easy peasy accounting system

Now, the first one, I sort of was doing already but not quite in the right format. So on Sunday I just rearranged my spreadsheets to show incomings and outgoings in a better format and I must say it makes it a lot easier to see where I'm at, what I need to sell, how many things I need to sell, etc. There's a free cash flow spreadsheet on the business link website here. <-- This link will open the Excel spreadsheet straight away.
The Simplex D is a useful booklet set out by week where you put your sales and your expenses and stick your receipts to that page for that week and then for taxes all will be easy and simple. However, there's no way I'm doing accounts on paper. So I'm searching for an Excel equivalent.
So in the end, it showed me how to better format my accounts. I need to rearrange my files. I currently have invoices listed by type - supplies, hallmarking, etc. and then by date. But I need to change it to the other way around - I should have files by date and then state the type on the accounting sheet.
So that was my fun use of a Saturday!! I did do other fun stuff, though, some friends came over for dinner and such!
I also got my package back from hallmarking and one of the necklaces broke in the post, which is a real pain. I've sent that type of necklace before and never had a problem. Snif.
And I will get around to taking a photo of my new gloves at some point today. I've already used them lots!