What templates or formulas do you use to track your expenses? Especially those who breed for a living?
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I have very small scale expenses so I keep everything in a google sheets. I keep each one by year. I have a seperate one for each year. Under each one you can add more sheets. I have an Everything which every expense goes under; and Reptiles, which I put costs of actual reptiles under; I have Inverts which I put cost of live invertebres (scorpions, pet/breeder roaches, isopods, etc.); I also have feeders which I’ll put costs of mealworms, roaches, waxworms, hornworms, etc. that I feed off; I also have supplies which everything else goes in, it’s mainly for expenses like enclosures, hides, dishes, lights, materials, etc.
Under each category I have Description (item name), Date, and Balance (eg If I bought something it would be -$25).
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Laziness costs me $20/mo in the form of a QuickBooks subscription 
I’m too lazy to track my sales, expenses, assets, ITC’s and whatnot using spreadsheets. Plus I can use QuickBooks to invoice and receive payments
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One thing that I did in my Excel sheet to make things easier is create categories for my expenses. If you use Excel’s filtering tool on the column header, you can quickly toggle between categories.
But here is the important part: make your categories basically the same as the categories on the 1040 Schedule C. For example, Schedule C categories include “Advertising,” “Supplies,” and “Legal and Professional Services.”
So for me:
Morphmarket Subscription = “Advertising”
Feeders = “Supplies”
Financial Consulting = “Legal and Professional Services”
I do my own taxes in Turbo Tax and have had no trouble with it, but I did hire an accountant to review everything when I transitioned from hobby to business.
Hope this helps!
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Thank you very much for everyone’s advice!
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I don’t breed for a living, (maybe one day would make me happy) But I do have my own business.
I guess what you need depends on scale and type of the business.
I am a health care consultant. Basically I am the product.
My Business has few expenses other than a bit of stationary and travel, no employees, no set up costs.
So for me its simple to just record my expenditure if any per month on a word document.
Yes Old skool but its easy, cheep and does the job.
(I am in the uk for tax regulation purposes)
If your not huge or your business does not need it, why complicate things or spend on expense tracking software, if you are bigger or your expenses are more complicated then yes you would need more.
On the other hand, do what makes you happy.
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Thanks! I plan to stay small and breed for fun, not really turn a profit. I would however, like to see if/when my snakes start paying for themselves and for future snake purchases.
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Good for you. I know I said maybe, but to be honest I have always been happy breeding for fun and getting a little extra money from it to grow my collection.
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That’s exactly what I want to do, breed for fun and profit goes towards future Reptiles 
I plan to keep a Google sheet for my expenses. I currently use it for keeping track of current geckos weights etc
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Well you have earned my respect for that. Nothing wrong with breeding for a living, but…
As long as your doing it for the fun of it.
My top 3 most fun and exiting days (in no order) are —
New snake day
New eggs day
New hatchlings poking out/live birth day
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I can’t wait to breed my own reptiles, it’s great buying reptiles… But I really want to see some reptiles from the start.
If I don’t make a profit, it doesn’t matter because I’m breeding for what I want, just means I won’t be buying much… But to be honest I think of any to keep most of mine anyway so buying will be rather limited.
I can’t wait to see the possibilities 
But I can wait for the decision as to who goes and who stays, I’m not sure I will be able to let go of my babies
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That’s the trap 
it can take over your house if your not careful. Still, so what if it does 
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It’s not a trap, it’s a hobby hobbies are expensive 
My biggest problem will be size, but I could always bin the kids toys to make room if I have to 
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I swear it makes owning them better, just seeing the babies and knowing that you get to watch them grow. I’ve loved watching KJ grow, hatcjijg out of his egg to now being paired and having his eggs incubating and waiting for them to hatch! He’s come so far from the tiny Crestie, to a daddy! 🥲 Obviously I felt this way about my other babies, but I didn’t get to watch them all hatch. So it’s just that much better!
It’s a beautiful experience imo, I do hope you manage to catch your guys hatching! 
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That’s what I do, I breed mainly for fun and revenue goes to more reptiles, enclosures, racks, etc. The main limit’s space but I’m going to save money from reptiles for a facility or building in the future.
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Yes please
I hope this works out for me one day
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