As a health and fitness professional, you likely already have or want to take on some of your own private clients.
Running your own business is a great way to make some money and get ahead in your health and fitness career. One important aspect of running your own business is dealing with your finances.
Although it may seem daunting, managing your business finances with good accounting practices is quite easy, especially with some of the online tools out there today.
In this piece, we’ll take you through some of the top accounting tips and tricks to keep in mind as you build your client base.
The way in which you want your clients to pay you is entirely up to you. However, most individual workers tend to charge their clients after successfully completing sessions. This helps to ensure client satisfaction, and clients are also more likely to return to you when they don’t have to pay for sessions in advance.
However, some people also like to pay for personal training sessions earlier rather than later as it gives them extra motivation to do their sessions with you. This is often the case for beginners who are new to exercise or for those who want to fit a strict routine into their schedules.
When you send your clients an invoice, you have to ensure that the following information is on the document in order to make it tax compliant.
It’s also important to keep in mind the days that you invoice your clients.
If you invoice monthly, it’s best to have a designated day in the month that you send out your invoices as this will help you keep track of the amount of money owed to you and will assist you with financial projections when eventually expanding your business.
One of the key things that will save you a lot of time and money is keeping track of your expenses. You should make a weekly habit of going through what you have spent and assessing whether or not the expense was for business purposes or for personal matters.
Once you have categorised these, it makes dealing with tax a lot easier and will also save you money when paying hourly rates for an accountant or tax consultant. Remember, the more preparation you do, the less expenditure you’ll require on hiring an expert at a later stage.
As a freelance health and fitness professional, it’s vital to keep track of the income you generate. Not only is it great to see how your business has expanded, but it’s also important for determining the tax bracket you fall into.
Your monthly income figure will also be the first question your tax consultant asks you for. As mentioned, it’s recommended that you send out your invoices on the same day of each month.
Once you have sent out your invoices, add up the total to see how much gross income you have made. This will allow your tax specialist to give you a figure of what to set aside for tax.
When you run a business, you have to keep hold of everything from invoices to receipts to bank statements in order to keep track of income and expenses. Although this sounds daunting, this is made far easier by using any of the new accounting apps and software available out there today.
Platforms like Quickbooks, Xero, or Sage (no affiliation) are some of the easiest ones to navigate as an individual, and you don’t need to be an accounting expert to learn your way around their user-friendly interfaces.
These types of software also allow you to generate invoices and will ask you for all the relevant information so that you don’t have to remember what is required every time you invoice a client.
Almost everyone is guilty of leaving their tax return to the last minute. Although this is tempting, doing a little bit regularly will save you a lot of time and stress, leaving you more capacity to focus on what really matters – building your business and your client base.
If you choose to hire a tax consultant, they may offer services that help you to stay on top of your tax returns.
However, most of them charge by the hour, so the more time they have to spend sifting through your receipts, the more they will charge you, which will inevitably eat into your profits. The more you can do yourself, the better.
Once you start expanding your business, you may want to start investing in marketing and promotion systems or perhaps even subscribe to certain forums to offer your expert advice.
These activities are important for expanding your business, but they can also end up costing a lot if you don’t have a set budget for sales and marketing.
For this reason, the best thing to do is to set aside a certain amount that you are willing to spend on these services. Having a budget is also great for assessing your business’s performance and will provide you with insights on whether your expenditure is helping to generate leads and income.
If you are in need of some accounting advice, it’s also perfectly acceptable to get in touch with a professional. This will leave you to focus on what you love in your professional fitness career, gaining, retaining and supporting clients.