Out of the Shoebox

Bookkeeping for someone who has never kept books: a spreadsheet that does every sum, and a guide that shows you what to type, week by week.

If your business records are a shoebox of receipts, a bank app and a vague worry about tax, this is for you. It is for one person running something small: a side hustle next to a job, a freelance trade, a stall, a service, a shop on a marketplace. In the US that means a sole proprietor filing Schedule C; in the UK a sole trader filing Self Assessment. It assumes you know nothing, and explains every idea the first time it appears.

What you get

• A US workbook and a UK workbook (Excel .xlsx, built to work in Excel and Google Sheets). You type dates, words and amounts into one tab; the rest adds itself up.
• Two worked years you can open and click around: Rosa, a dog walker in the US with a day job, and Sam, a full-time mobile bike mechanic in the UK. Every figure about them in the guide comes from their workbooks.
• A 60-page illustrated guide that teaches the whole system from zero, in the order you will do it.
• Printable pages in US Letter and A4: weekly and monthly tick sheets, a paper cash book page, a mileage log, receipt envelope labels, a year-end checklist, category cheat sheets for both countries, and the key dates.

What the workbooks do

• Money In & Out: one row for every sum, with dropdowns for the category and the account, and a Check column that says in plain words when a row needs fixing.
• Categories already matched to the tax form: each one adds up to a line of Schedule C (US) or a box of the Self Assessment self-employment pages (UK). You can add your own.
• Months: income, costs and profit for every month, with a chart.
• Bank Check: type each statement's closing balance and it tells you whether your sheet matches the bank, or how far off it is.
• Mileage: the 2026 rates built in. US: 72.5 cents a mile, then 76 cents from 1 July 2026, picked by the trip's date. UK: 55p for the first 10,000 business miles, then 25p, worked out as you pass the line.
• Who Owes Me: invoices, with overdue ones flagged.
• Set Aside: an estimate of the tax on your profit and the share to put away each month. US: self-employment tax plus your income tax bracket, and the four estimated tax dates. UK: Income Tax and Class 4 National Insurance at 2026 to 2027 rates, and the payments on account that can make a first January bill half as big again.
• Your tax tab: the year added up line by line for Schedule C (with Part III for stock), or box by box for Self Assessment, with the £1,000 trading allowance compared and the running totals Making Tax Digital asks for each quarter.
• Year End: what the business owns and owes on the last day, and a closing checklist.

What the guide teaches

• Set up in an afternoon: whether the tax office sees a business, separating the money, when a sum counts (cash basis), what records to keep and for how long, opening the workbook in Excel or Google Sheets, and the categories, with twelve practice cases and answers.
• Fifteen minutes a week: turning statements, payout emails and receipts into rows, including the traps that catch most beginners: recording platform payouts gross with the fee apart, transfers, paying yourself, costs paid from your own pocket. How to catch up when you are months behind.
• Once a month: the Bank Check and how to find a missing row, reading your profit, invoices, the mileage log, and setting money aside for tax.
• Once a year: bigger purchases, working from home, counting stock, your tax tab line by line, 1099 forms (US), Making Tax Digital (UK), and starting next year's file.
• Reference: the 2026 and 2026 to 2027 dates, plain-English words, spreadsheet troubleshooting, common questions, and the IRS and HMRC pages every fact comes from.

Good to know

• Tax figures are for 2026 (US) and 2026 to 2027 (UK), from the IRS's and HMRC's own pages, which the guide lists. Rates change: the guide shows where to update them each year.
• This is general information about keeping records and how the rules work, not advice for your situation. The workbooks' tax figures are estimates for setting money aside, not a calculation of your bill.
• The workbooks keep cash-basis records for one person's business. They do not cover payroll, VAT or sales tax returns, partnerships or companies, and they are not Making Tax Digital software: they cannot send anything to HMRC.
• You need Excel, or a free Google account for Google Sheets.
• This is a digital download. No physical book is shipped.

Files

• Out-of-the-Shoebox-Guide.pdf (60 pages, US Letter, with bookmarks)
• Out-of-the-Shoebox-Spreadsheets.zip: the US workbook, the UK workbook, Rosa's and Sam's example workbooks, and a short start-here note
• Out-of-the-Shoebox-Printables-US-Letter.pdf and Out-of-the-Shoebox-Printables-A4.pdf (10 pages each)