Accounting for Photographers

For the past several years I have struggled with finding and then using an accounting system that is suitable for my photography business.  Last year I used Quickbooks Premier and while it was certainly adequate for all my business needs it was fairly hard to learn and required a bit of work to make modifications to utilize my forms and other documents into a simple to use workflow.

This year I found a new online accounting software called Kashoo.  I was skeptical at first about using an online service.  I read a few reviews and signed up for a 30 day free account.  The cost (when I signed up) was $ 9.95 per month and after my free trial I paid the whole year in advance.  This cost provides all your accounting services for up to 10 businesses.  Both my wife and I have a business so I thought it would be a great idea. 

The screen shot to the right shows the free trial page and the pricing information along with the contact information for their on-line support.

Kashoo is a fairly standard accounting software package the provides a double-entry system (it handles most of the balanced entries).  It does not do everything that a full featured program like Quickbooks, but it will do most of the accounting required for a small business and it is amazingly easy to use.  Kashoo also has very good support and responds promptly to questions.

They have a blog and several articles about general accounting and specifics about their software.  I had a question about depreciation and they responded by the next day with the transaction to use.

My first serious requirement was to prepare an invoice for a photo shoot I was doing.   Kashoo provided an invoice template that could be customized with my logo and had the ability to print out several paragraphs of a scope of work. These paragraphs can be expanded much further than the invoices included in Quickbooks and that initial problem led me to look around for other accounting options and how I found Kashoo. 


Kashoo also has a nice Profit and Loss Statement and Balance Sheet.  It also tracks taxes payable, accounts receivable and accounts payable.  They start out with a standard Chart of Accounts and they allow you to add accounts of your own to match your own requirements:

Kashoo does not do everything and I wish it had more powerful reports, but it does allow all it's information to be exported to Excel where you can slice and dice it any way you want.I still don't believe that they include additional business units to be added at no cost.  I would suggest you look into this before they figure out they can actually charge extra for something like that. (I hope I did not lead them to make a change in their policies). 

This is my opinion only.  I don't get any payment for a good review or a referral (although I would certainly take a couple of months free if it were offered).  This way I am under no obligation to give a good or bad report and can be absolutely open and honest on any opinion.