Home Business Appointments and Record Keeping

Good morning, everyone! I'm writing to you today from the COLD tundra of central Iowa where snow has fallen and the wind chill factor is negative 20. These are the days that I am ever so thankful to work from home!!!

Today, I'm going to talk about appointments and record keeping. Kind of a mundane topic I know, but important nevertheless. So, let's get started with appointments. It is important for you to have some kind of appointment book. You can purchase one or you can make one yourself. This appointment book should have every day of every month within it and, if you can find one that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, each day should give you a list of times to schedule in your clients. You should be able to see, at a glance, what times you have available for any given day.

Personally, I like to create these myself because I know exactly what I want in my appointment book. I like to be able to write the client's name next to the time they've chosen to come for a reading as well as the word "new" if they are a new client or the word "repeat" if they are a repeat client. I also like to be able to write the payment amount in that space too because, at quarterly and yearly tax time, I am able to go through each page of my appointment book with my calculator and get the amounts I need quickly. This saves me from having to have a separate book for "income".

These appointment books should always be done in pencil since you will occasionally get cancellations and re-schedules. Once a client has come for their reading and paid you for your services, you can go over your pencil writing with a pen. This is always a good practice as pencil has a way of fading and you don't want to have difficulty reading the payment amounts when it comes time to prepare your taxes. You might think this is silly if your prices are the same for your readings, but you will have prices for specials too and, perhaps, days that you will read outside your home for holiday occasions or special events. You'll want to have these scheduled into your appointment book too, so that you don't schedule any clients at those times and, at the end of the day, you can write in the total amount of money made at  these special events.

Your appointment book should also have a section for expenses as you'll want to keep track of anything you purchase for your business as well. Again, this is just to keep everything in one book to make tax time easier for you. The expense section should have a place to write the date, what you purchased, and what you paid for your purchase. You'll have to save your receipts too for any purchase you make for your business, so find a safe place for these receipts.

You might be inclined to want to do this appointment book on your computer, but I don't advise that. Computers are too unpredictable. If your computer decides to stop working, you might lose everything and then you would have no record at all of what you've made in your business or what your expenses have been. Technology can be awesome, but sometimes doing things without technology is best. This is one of those times.

As for record keeping... you may be thinking that this is the same as your appointment book with all the information you've put into it. However, the record keeping I'm speaking of here is about your clients and their readings. I like to have a record of every reading I do - the client's name, their question, the cards drawn, and a short recap of what the cards shared. This way, if the client returns, I can look back at their previous reading before their appointment time and get some feedback from that client once they arrive to know whether they are "doing the work" suggested by the cards and how things have turned out. This also allows me to see if certain cards keep popping up in their readings which may require further scrutiny.

I have created this kind of record keeping book for the Wee Folk Toracles readings. I offer it as a free download on my website at www.landofweefolk.com under the OTHER FREEBIES link. It's titled "Wee Folk Toracles Client Records Pages for 2018".

Okay, that's it for appointments and record keeping. I know it was pretty drab reading, but it's something that I felt shouldn't be skipped. Have a GREAT day!!!