Bree Bridges

[insert biography here]

I used to write code. Now I write books with my BFF. You can read them:
Kit Rocha | Joelle Knox
Moira Rogers

Find Me

  • Email
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter

Powered by Genesis

Self-Publishing Income Tracking Spreadsheet

January 30, 2015 by Bree

Don’t look now, it’s time for another round of… LOOK, LOOK!

Glittery pink text with SPARKLES that reads: A SPREADSHEET!

(What, I made that glittery pink sparkle image, and I’m going to get some use out of it. Never waste glitter text, guys. It’s like, the first rule of the internet.)

Last time I uploaded my Self-Pub MTD Income Estimate spreadsheet, which is how I keep a rough running estimate of my monthly sales.

This spreadsheet is a lot more straightforward, because all I track with it are deposits.  I update this at the end of the month (*coughcough* or the end of the year) with all of the deposits that hit my bank account. There’s no conversion here, just straight up dollars.  The big things I keep track of with this sheet are my monthly and quarterly totals, my totals by vendor and my breakdown of self-pub vs publisher money.

Year to Date Spreadsheet

This one has fake numbers in January. The breakdown of the fake numbers probably tells you a lot about my idea of what % of income comes from which vendors, even though I tried not to be too obvious.

There’s really not a lot to it, but I’ll break down the three parts just in case.

The top of the spreadsheet with running totals and YTD total.The top of the spreadsheet is all automatic. Everything in here should update as you put your numbers in the bottom two sections. It tracks your total monthly payment, and also breaks it down by traditionally/epublished vs self-published. On top of that, it keeps a running total of each quarter, and at the end of each line it breaks down what % of your income came from publishers and what % came from self-publishing vendors.

 The middle of the spreadsheet, where you can add each self-pub vendor payment as you recieve it.
The self-publishing section is also pretty straight-forward. The vendors are pretty easy to tweak and update as needed. That holds my current list, including revealing my current laziness in tracking down which country $1.47 payments from Amazon came from. (Bad, Bree, bad.)

Some vendors pay quarterly. I tend to black out the months I don’t anticipate payments so I won’t be dumb and wonder why they aren’t there, because almost everything I do with spreadsheets is pre-planning for the days where I’m really dumb and wonder very silly things.

As you add payments, the monthly totals will update at the top in the green boxes. The year-to-date total by vendor will update in the 2nd column in teal. The year-to-date grand total for self-publishing shows up in the YTD Selfpub box. At the end of each line is the % breakdown by vendor. Finally, quarterly self-pub totals show up above the months.

And finally…

Spreadsheet where you input money from your publisher.

The publisher section is basically exactly the same as the self-publisher, except you have to fill in your own publishers.  I’ll be honest, this section is pretty basic and doesn’t handle a ton of excitement or variation…but I only have a few epublishers, one who pays monthly and one quarterly, so I don’t have a lot of excitement here.  But if you’re just tracking deposits, this should do it.

And that is the spreadsheet in all its glory! There’s a download link below, and I have it on good authority that it works just fine on google docs. Feel free to take and adapt and have fun.  And if you have any questions, feel free to ask! (And just for fun, I threw the link to my Running Totals spreadsheet in the bottom here, too.)

Year to Date Totals

A file for tracking your Year-to-Date payments from vendors and publishers. Includes monthly and yearly totals and percentages, broken down by vendor, publisher and self-pub vs publisher, and quarterly income totals.

Download Now!2791 Downloads

Running Totals Spreadsheet

An excel spreadsheet that tracks MTD sales for self-pubbers. Vendors included: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Draft2Digital, Apple, and Google. Also provides a way to estimate money from Amazon borrows.

Download Now!3231 Downloads

Filed Under: Self-Publishing, Software & Spreadsheets Tagged With: accounting, organization

Comments

  1. ramengrrl says

    January 30, 2015 at 8:49 PM

    be still my nerdly heart! <3 this so much!

    • Bree says

      January 30, 2015 at 8:55 PM

      <3 I love it when people love spreadsheets with me. :)

  2. ramengrrl says

    January 30, 2015 at 9:21 PM

    oh man, i totally geeked out today and got to use the lookup function. and now i wish i was a writer so i could use your nifty spreadsheets!

  3. Misa says

    January 31, 2015 at 3:02 AM

    Ooh, thanks for sharing! These are fabulous.

  4. clarelondon says

    January 31, 2015 at 3:20 AM

    As an author/accountant mix, I love this post on the glory of spreadsheets :). ESPECIALLY the glitter! LOL

  5. PD Singer says

    January 31, 2015 at 9:14 AM

    Very kind of you to share. Thanks!

  6. Mikaela says

    January 31, 2015 at 11:39 AM

    In the end, I had to make my own spreadsheet since I realised I need the income in my local currency, but your spreadsheet made it less hairpulling to create a spreadsheet that suited my needs so thank you!

  7. Kris Ripper says

    October 30, 2016 at 7:02 PM

    Oh my god, I’ve been googling something like this all day! YOU ARE A ROCKSTAR. Thanks so much! *happy spreadsheet sigh*

Things I’ve Made

Downloads
Cover Art
Books

Things I Talk About

  • Formatting Tricks
  • Marketing
  • Randomness
  • Self-Publishing
  • Software & Spreadsheets

Things I’ve Said

  • Gootloader infection cleaned up
  • Word Count Printable Stickers (8.5×11″)
  • About RWA, the past week, and the future. (Vote)
  • Tools that helped me keep my cool in 2015
  • Help, my FB ads have too much text!
  • A5 Planner Sheet: Daily To Do list w/ word count & goals
  • Self-Publishing Income Tracking Spreadsheet
  • A post everyone should read.
  • Project Word Count Trackers for A5 Planners
  • What’s the plan, man?
  • Tracking Month-to-Date Self-Pub Sales
  • I interrupt this blog to comment on promotion.
  • Since this is a thing I’m doing now…
  • Formatting Tricks (2/?): Linking With Redirects
  • Formatting Tricks (1/?): Search & Replace in Word

Tags I’ve Tagged

a5 planners accounting backmatter ebook formatting facebook advertising HTML coding kindle unlimited organization planner pages promotion ranty bree search & replace self-publishing sigil smart people saying smart things templates