Accounting

What a weekend! With kids' day on Friday, my usual day off, this weekend was kind of brutal. Thank goodness I got my new boots last weekend or my feet might not have survived this one.

Today I did a good deal of resting and catching up on accounting. I made some mistakes in setting up the cash scenario for this weekend and made it tough to figure out how much cheap merchandise I actually sold. It took a few hours and lots of counting, but I finally got it all untangled.

Last week I realized that I might be able to find an app to help me tally up sales, split cash from credit cards, and calculate commissions. This needs to be done on Sunday night in order to write paychecks. That is also the time when I'm tired and feel the least able to do it.

So, I found an app called simply "Spreadsheet". It is fantastic for a number of reasons:
1. It's in my pocket.
2. It's compatible with Excel.
3. I can email excel files directly from it.
4. If I needed to, I could design the spreadsheet in Excel and put it on the phone.



[Sales Sheet. Notice the magical column C that sorts things into the correct tally column...]

I set up a spreadsheet quite quickly with this app. This sheet has one magical column that determines how to handle the amount on that line: subtotal multiple items or complete the transaction and take a regular credit card, American Express, cash, or (if we know you personally) a check. Then the spreadsheet totals each payment type, figures sales commissions and per diem payments. At the end of the day it tells me how much cash should be in that day's bank deposit, and what the final credit card settlement should be. Having it laid out like this makes it faster and easier to find mistakes.



[Daily totals, some stuff redacted. I don't mind telling my secrets, but these numbers have to do with paying others.]

The Spreadsheet interface is extremely intuitive. I said earlier that one benefit is that the files can be set up in Excel and ported over, but I doubt that would ever be necessary. This particular sheet has many cells with complex formulae, but the full-featured cut/paste system made populating them simple. If you've used cut and paste in Excel, this works just the same.

Spreadsheet has implemented a huge subset of Excel's functions so there isn't much that it can't do.

My old dream of a full office in my pocket just keeps getting closer and closer!