Bookkeeping Essentials with Danielle Famble

Discover the keys to financial success in your voiceover business with our latest episode featuring the savvy money boss herself, Danielle Famble. Learn how to categorize your business expenses to maximize tax benefits and streamline your finances. From new equipment to that signature lipstick you love, learn how to turn everyday purchases into strategic business investments. Danielle shares her expert advice on the importance of collaborating with accountants and bookkeepers to ensure every dollar spent works for you, boosting both profitability and business accountability. Our conversation also includes actionable tips for managing your finances effectively, focusing on understanding profit and loss statements. Regularly reviewing your financial statements can prevent overspending and foster business growth, and we provide the know-how to keep your budget healthy.

00:01 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey bosses, Anne Ganguza here. Are you ready to take the next step in your voiceover career? At Anne Ganguza Productions, I specialize in target marketed coaching and demo production that gets you booked. If you're thinking about elevating your performance or creating an awesome demo, check me out at annganguzacom. 

00:22 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, nne Ganguza. 

00:41 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, Welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the Boss Money Talk series. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I'm delighted to bring back our resident money boss, Danielle Famble, to the show. 

00:55 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Danielle- hey Anne. 

00:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yay, welcome. How are you today? 

00:58 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Hey, I'm great. How are? 

00:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) you doing? I'm doing awesome. Well, danielle, I bought a new lipstick for the show, a new lipstick the new Red Boss lipstick. Those people that know me know that I'm all about my lipsticks and I talk about my lipstick brand and I use my lipstick and my colors for my branding, for my business. And I started to think, well, okay, can I expense this lipstick? Right, can I expense this lipstick? And so I chatted with my accountant to find out if it was possible to do that, and you know what it is. So I am so excited that I can now put lipstick. And we all know about these headphones. I was like, yeah, I know I could have expensed these headphones. It's a business expense, but guess what this lipstick is too. 

01:45 And I think it's important for bosses to understand a little bit I think more about. We talked in our last episode about how important education was to the bosses. It's important to educate yourself on the basics of, let's say, bookkeeping for your business, like what sorts of things do you spend money on and how do you categorize them. I think that's an important aspect of bookkeeping. What are your thoughts on that, danielle? 

02:09 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Oh yeah, that's really important. It's important to know how your business is working and bookkeeping is sort of the daily ledger of what money is coming in and going out for your business, knowing even the basics of bookkeeping and the basics of bookkeeping. In our last conversation, our last episode, we talked about the bookkeepers or people that you might have on your team, which they may be doing it, but you, as the VO boss, should understand even just the basics of bookkeeping for your business. So you know, when I spend money on this lipstick or these headphones or a new microphone, these are expenses that can be expense for my business. And what are the categories that you can expense things in your business. I recently bought a ticket to go to another one of the voiceover conferences and so I was thinking, okay, how am I expensing this? What account am I using for it? Making sure it's in my business account and it's going to be expense for continuing education. So I know the different categories and what you can expense in your business. 

03:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I think it's so important because before I actually had an accountant and I was trying to do this all on my own and I'm like, well, all right, at least I learned that I needed to have right. We talked how important it was to have that separate business account. 

03:20 But, then all of a sudden it was like what are my expenses, right? I just started throwing everything in and then it would always ask me what's the category? And I'm like, oh, I didn't think about what are the categories that are useful in your bookkeeping for voiceover? And I thought, wow, there's equipment, my internet connection. How do I classify that right? Subscriptions. 

03:40 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) SourceConnect. Even I pay for extra storage with Google, with my Gmail. That kind of thing can be expensed. The people that you work with. So we talked about the bookkeepers and the CPAs paying them for their services. 

03:55 Working with professionals, so professional fees there are so many things. 

04:00 That's what's great about running a business is that you get to make money and then you can expense all of these different things and then you're taxed on that. 

04:10 It's completely the opposite, for as a person, you get taxed on the money that you bring in, right, and then anything else is sort of just like deductions but like running a business is really amazing. That's why I love getting into the weeds about money and finances and bookkeeping, because once you learn how to sort of not play the game but kind of play the game, you can really make your business work for you much more efficiently. So learning about what it is that you're trying to do and making sure by being educated through a CPA or just finding you know education on your own, making sure that you can expense that appropriately for your business, sure, legally, in a tax efficient way, you can do a lot because we we use our bodies for our business. The chair that I'm sitting in in my studio is like an expensive ergonomic chair that normally I would not have ever purchased, but I'm in this chair for hours and so back support is really important, so that was part of the furniture of my office space. 

05:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And even medical that isn't covered by insurance, right? Medical expenses? Because is my Peloton? Is that an expense for my business? 

05:19 And I love what you said about knowing these things right and understanding the basics of what can be expense. 

05:26 What category am I putting it in? Because when I first started, I all of a sudden thought, oh God, there's categories. And then I didn't really categorize them properly, or I didn't quite know what categories to create, I mean. But in the end, when you look at your profit and loss statement, which is something that's so very basic to any accounting, right, I would look at the number and I'd say expenses, and it would be one big lump sum and I'd be like, well, what did I spend my money on? Right? And so that's where I think the importance of being able to categorize things really comes into play. And the fact is is that when you know about categories and things that you can expense for your business, it opens up the door of so many possibilities. It allowed me to confidently say, all right, I can do this, knowing that I'll be able to expense it for my business, and I think it helps me to actually go forth more confidently and also be more willing to try new avenues to grow my business. 

06:21 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, the confidence that comes from the education is second to none. And I will say, the best place to get that level of education for your business, for the business that you, vo Boss, are running not my business or Ann's business, but your specific business is to go to the person who has the knowledge about the numbers of your business it makes no sense to expense everything and who has the knowledge about the numbers of your business. It makes no sense to expense everything and then at the end of the year it looks like you made no profit because, again, the idea of running a business is to make a profit. It's not just to break even. We want to make money. That's why we're here. 

06:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And, by the way, if you report to the government that you've lost money for over five years in a row, they're going to start getting suspicious. And then the audit will come and, by the way, I've been audited twice and. 

07:09 I'm not ashamed of it because there's no foul play there or anything like that. I mean, literally, it's just when you run a business and you make money, they get a little bit interested in it and you can't have any red flags show up. And if you're going to be expensing everything and not showing a profit for a certain amount of time, then it might get a little bit suspicious. So you really need to work with someone, I think, that has an awareness of what's in the realm of reality, so that you're not necessarily taking advantage, even though I have my accountant. I literally purchased Rocket Money last year because I had so many subscriptions and I lost track of them, and that's like a big thing. Now is everything digital, is you're buying a subscription to it? I had subscriptions I forgot about right, and so I paid, of course, a subscription price to use rocket money. And then the funny thing about it is that if you do rocket money, they'll go and they'll find all your subscriptions, and then ultimately, you can even say at the end I'm like, oh gosh, do I really need to pay seven? I think it was $7 a month. Do I need to pay $7 a month to Rocket Money now Because they found all my subscriptions. They also offer to reduce the amount of money for your subscriptions because they'll go and negotiate with the companies to get a better rate. 

08:22 A lot of times you can say you know what I mean, I just can't afford it. I'm getting ready to cancel. And then they'll renegotiate with you. But you can also renegotiate with Rocket Money and say I can't afford the $7. And they'll say, well, what do you feel is fair? And so I said, all right, I can pay $3 a month. And so guess what? I? That's fantastic. But I've already paid them for two years. 

08:42 And all of a sudden I realized down at the bottom, I was thinking about canceling. And then they're like, hey, why don't you pay us what you think is fair? I said, all right, well, I can do this. Suffice to say, it's just one of those things that it helps you to really identify, like where your money is going. And so categories to me seem to be such a fundamental part of basic accounting and bookkeeping. And so what are some other like? If you look at a profit and loss statement, like I know some people, their eyes are maybe glazing over Profit and loss. It seems so formal. But what sorts of things are we going to be looking at when we see a profit and loss statement Like what's important for us to know as business owners? 

09:22 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) The main thing with a profit and loss statement is it really is sort of the name of it Profit, how much came in? How much money did the business make in this given period of time? Let's say it's a quarter or a month and I've been receiving monthly profit and loss statements. But how much money did you make during this given period of time and how much money went out during that same given period of time? 

09:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Inflows, outflows. 

09:45 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Inflows and outflows, how much came in, how much went out. I think it's really important to first think about how much came in, because you have a lot of control over that. That could be how much you're quoting for your clients, how many jobs that you've done, what your bookings are like. You have control over that aspect of it and you also have control over the loss side of it. How much is going out? So things like your subscriptions, which for me, I will say, when I really started like digging into my profit and loss statement, when I looked at subscription, I was like, well, what am I spending my money on? This is so much, it's crazy, crazy. Apple. Google Source. 

10:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Connect Internet connection. 

10:27 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Internet connections Internet connections, all the things. Quickbooks, yes, quickbooks. 

10:32 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) My account. 

10:32 - Intro (Announcement) All these different things. 

10:34 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) I mean it's just like I probably just named $100 just in that you know. Yeah, so it's knowing what is going out. Subscriptions for me is huge. Also, sometimes equipment but I don't buy a lot of equipment for my business that often Like, yeah, maybe I'll buy another microphone or an interface or an extra cable just in case For me. 

10:57 And again, this is something that a VO boss can look at their business and say, what do I need for my business? And then you'll know, okay, this is the category and this is how it's going to affect my profit and loss. But normally for me anyway, my business with the profit and loss, with the monthly expenses, it's really those subscriptions. And I think I love what you said about Rocket Money, where you can take a look and see like, do I really need all these subscriptions? And then you can kind of tune what is going out on your profit and loss statement. Another aspect would be the people that you pay. So if you have an assistant or a bookkeeper or if you're working with a CPA or whatever else that's going on. And it really is kind of going back to personal finance. It's kind of like looking at your budget for the month how much is going out for your budget every month in your home and then how much is coming in. It's the same kind of thing. 

11:50 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So profit and loss, your profit. And then, of course, what are some other, let's say, terms that you might see on a profit and loss statement, and I'm thinking like expenses right, obviously or inflows, outflows, assets I know I see that term a lot. What do you consider to be an asset in a voiceover, in a VO business? 

12:11 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) So, assets are anything that you own, that your business owns. I consider assets to be things like my booth is an asset. I could sell my booth for a certain amount of money, and so that's an asset. My microphone is an asset. My interface is an asset, any sort of like business furniture, that kind of thing those are the assets. 

12:33 A physical item, a physical item Like what the business owns. I'm a physical item, but my voice is the business, and so I am an asset of my business as well. I mean, you can't sell me. 

12:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You can sell your voice. 

12:47 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yes, I license the use of my voice. I sell my voice, but really, assets are anything that your business owns, but those are things that may or may not show up in your monthly profit and loss. Well, they might show up in your monthly profit and loss, but for me, when I'm looking at it, I'm looking at expenses. 

13:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, when I'm looking at my overview, I'm seeing assets in there. So that was just a term that I thought oh God, assets. It just seems so foreign. You know what I mean Because I'm not a financial person, so to speak. I mean, but I have to be a financial person enough to understand what I'm looking at on any given month or any given report, a profit and loss statement Also, so I know. Another term that I've seen on my reports is liabilities. What would be my liability? 

13:31 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Liabilities would also be like your debt, so what you owe For me? I put most of my expenses on my business's credit card, yes, and then I pay that off at the end of the month, so I'm seeing sort of a rotating liability. 

13:46 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I was going to say your credit card would be considered a liability then right, because that's something that you owe on. 

13:51 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Right, and for me that's, generally speaking, what it looks like in this business. 

13:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, that makes sense. And one note that I'll say about my I have a business credit card, which is I think it's one of the best. In addition to that separate business account, having a business credit card makes it so, so easy. I have a business credit card and a business debit card, and it makes it so easy to keep track because, again, everything is like electronic these days, and so I can feed it in as a stream into my QuickBooks, and so the only issue I have, though, is I have a business American Express Now my American Express. 

14:28 In and of itself, that credit card categorizes things, but it doesn't necessarily categorize it as it comes into QuickBooks, so that's something that my bookkeeper or accountant will do to make sure that we know, okay, what was that $100 charge or what was that charge that just came through, that charge that just came through, and so I think that having a if you can keep it simple we talked about that before if you can keep it simple, having a business card that you use just for business expenses and that can include, like, maybe, paying stuff online or physically buying like a new mic, or going out and buying dinner for voiceover people during a meetup, right, that kind of thing. I will always use my business card so that that can just go automatically into my expenses. 

15:12 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Absolutely. I do the same thing. My business credit card is through Chase and what's interesting is that Chase will do its best to categorize things, but it's not quite right all the time and then bring it into QuickBooks, because I have QuickBooks automatically linked to. Chase. It's not the same thing. So part of the basics of bookkeeping for me is making sure that I have done the homework of categorizing it correctly in Chase and in. 

15:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) QuickBooks. That's a good point. 

15:46 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Really, the person who's doing the QuickBooks, more or less, has in the past been my bookkeeper, but I'm starting to take more responsibility for it because my bookkeeper makes assumptions and will ask me about it. But I have the single point of truth because I was the one who swiped it. Sometimes I'm like what was that? What version of Danielle swiped that card? 

16:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) for that thing I always be like what is this charge? I would say, bosses, it's so important to do. When you do have a business card, a business credit card or a business debit card, it's like really visit those transactions like frequently, because there'll be a lot of times when it'll be fresh and you'll be like I have no idea who that vendor is Like, what is that charge for? I have no idea who that vendor is Like, what is that charge for? And if you can immediately just kind of make that adjustment, it's going to be so helpful, rather than waiting until the end of the month and then saying, oh my gosh, I have no idea who this vendor is, and then maybe you find out you have that subscription you've paid for six months in a row and you didn't need it. So I think it's important to always be checking those expenses all the time and looking at them, because sometimes and I will say this as a girl who loves to shop and I love to shop online Amazon has ruined me. 

16:51 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) I'm just saying I'll tell you Same, same. 

16:54 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I need it now. I need everything because Amazon seems to sell everything and I need it before 24 hours. This is a side note, but anytime I work through another vendor and it takes like five days to ship, I'm like really what? Yeah, you don't have that two-day shipping what is that what's going on? And then when Amazon delays the order, I'm like what? Like I get angry, but anyways, I digress. 

17:14 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) No, but you're making a really good point and I'll speak from personal experience, because this is something that I did not do for the longest and I'm currently in the moment going through three or four months ago of expenses because I didn't do it even though yeah, my bookkeeper will, but I'm sort of like after the fact, following up on what my bookkeeper did, because maybe it is or is not the correct yes thing to categorize. 

17:38 It's something that can be done at the end of the week and it takes just a few moments, yeah, but if you put a little bit of time into it more frequently, it will save you hours and googles and headaches later. 

17:53 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Calling. I agree I don't do it as much as I should either, and it's just one of those things that when you have to go back and figure out, oh my God, what was that expense? So I think it's important absolutely that you are looking at your cards and your debits and outgoing expenses and, of course, incoming as well. The other thing that I want to talk about is the fees. Right, Because the fees are not something that aren't automatically handled all the time by QuickBooks. When you have a I guess you call it a feed your bank feed right, it could be things coming in from PayPal. Well, PayPal takes a certain amount, a percentage, for transactions. Stripe takes a certain percentage, Everybody does. Quickbooks takes a certain percentage. You have to account for that in your bookkeeping and that is an important thing to categorize, because maybe you think you're making $100, but in reality you're making $98.53. And so that becomes an important thing. 

18:43 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) It's incredibly important too, because, yes, you are not making the $100 to your point that you think you are, but that fee is a business expense, that fee is a cost of doing business, and so it does need to be accounted for appropriately. Now, does that mean that I am the person going through and marking every single fee? 

19:03 No, that is why I have eventually outsourced that to a bookkeeper, but I do need to know the difference between how much should have come in and these fees, because the fees are an expense and those expenses do add up. So when you're looking at your profit and loss it's like whoa, what is this? You should understand that some of this is fees. Some of it is Danielle swiping the card for whatever thing, maybe a subscription, or maybe buying something for my business. But you should know the difference. And then that actually gives you the opportunity to decide and plan and budget for your business. Oh yeah, so if I can see what's going on with my expenses, maybe I've been spending a little bit too much on subscriptions. If I can cut that back, then I can use that additional money to take a class or to do a coaching or whatever. It gives you the knowledge and it arms you with like what you need to be financially responsible for running your business. 

20:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And also it helps you to determine as well what to charge. Yeah, because sometimes I take fees into account. I do believe that fees are part of being a business. So I'm not that one person who says, can you pay me friends and family? Because if it's a business, I mean I'm willing to pay that. I mean, if I can get away with it, sure, not paying that fee, but in reality I'm a business. 

20:24 So I've come to accept that there will be a fee and so if I want to make it accountable, right, I'm going to have to pay that fee. So I might. Then, instead of charging $100 for the job, I might charge $125. And then I've accounted for that fee in my head, but I haven't told anybody that I'm accounting. Necessarily, the company doesn't need to know that I'm charging $25 more because I want to account for that fee, or whatever I decide to do. I mean, that's one thing is being aware of those expenses as you are getting paid will help you to determine your fair compensation. And of course, we always like to say that you are worth it. Yes, you are, so price yourself appropriately. 

21:03 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) And I think being aware it means really looking at like the data of your business. That's how you become aware. Really looking at like the data of your business, that's how you become aware. 

21:13 If you allow someone else to deal with it, then you're not really aware of what's going on with your business and you're missing out on some opportunities for maybe charging more or maybe how you can save money because you're spending a certain amount more than you should or more than you've budgeted. Staying on top of the basics of the bookkeeping really kind of keeps you aware of what's going on in your business. Again, I'll say I've not done a great job at this in the past and I'm learning from my negligence in the past is really that like. If I can keep my mind and my eyes on the day-to-day expenses and profit in my business, that actually makes me feel so much more confident and competent when I am requesting or making a quote for a certain amount of money. However, I'm running my business. 

21:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) It's giving me so much more confidence because I know the day-to-day data of my business financially speaking, yeah it is absolutely important and, as I was alluding to before, being an online girl, like an online shopper, when I went off on that tangent of Amazon, sometimes it's like a little bit of an addiction. It's like here, click, buy, and it's so easy. And again, it's so easy to not look right, it's so easy to not look at your credit card expenses, or so easy to like kind of avoid it. And I'm that person. I'm willing to admit it. I mean, I've been in denial. I might have had a month or two where I was like way overspent, I shouldn't have purchased that. 

22:36 But I think keeping your eyes on your finances it's kind of like you know, I've been on this health journey, right, and before I wouldn't look at the scale, I would not look, I did not weigh myself for a long, long time and now, all of a sudden, when you're watching right, it makes you become more conscious and it keeps you more on top of things. 

22:51 So I do believe it's very important for you to really check those finances, check the bookkeeping, and it'll really, like you said, make you feel so much more confident and so much more competent right in running that business, because you will have a handle on. Okay, I know that I'm not really utilizing this subscription software anymore, so I can maybe give that up and then maybe invest in something else. So it really clears the path for you to grow. And I think that is one thing that is so important in our businesses that we should always be looking for opportunities to grow and financial anything should not be inhibiting us from doing that. If you can find ways to save, find ways to be aware of your finances and understand, oh, I can save something here, so that means I can invest more here, that's just going to give you a whole lot more confidence moving forward. 

23:41 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, I love that. And also, if you're not sure and you have questions, the best place to ask those questions or the best person to ask those questions is to the person who knows your business intimately and also what the implications are. So that would be an accountant or that would be some sort of professional. It's not going to the Facebook groups and saying, hey, can I expense? Blah, blah, blah, because what I can expense in my business may be different than what you can expense in your business and my revenue and ability to expense certain things in my business can maybe withstand me spending a certain amount of money on a certain category. 

24:16 So my answer might be not the right answer for your business. So I think it's really important to educate yourself. Find the perfect person to educate you, and it's someone who knows your business. And if you don't work with an accountant already, find someone, have them look at the numbers of your business. And if you don't work with an accountant already, find someone, have them look at the numbers of your business and then they can tell you specifically the answer to your specific unique business. 

24:39 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And they can help you set up those categories which we say are so important, right and then? So I would say absolutely kind of, to recap right, your essentials of bookkeeping are to really keep an eye on a daily, weekly basis on inflows and outflows, understand your categories and if you don't know how to categorize something, you can certainly talk to your bookkeeper or someone knowledgeable that can help you with that. And is it an expense, yes or no? You can find out more that way and ask someone that this is what they do for a living I mean, I'm a big proponent of that and educate yourself on the basics of looking at a profit and loss statement, because I think that's going to be so important in helping you to really organize and make plans and strategize your goals for the future. 

25:24 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Absolutely. 

25:26 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, another wonderful Money Talks with Danielle today. Thanks so much for joining me again. I'm looking forward to our next podcast, Thanks and me too. 

25:36 - Danielle Famble (Co-host) Yeah, I love it. I love talking money. 

25:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yes, and a big shout out to IPDTL you too can connect and network like bosses. Find out more at IPDTLcom. Bosses, have an amazing week and make sure to check those books. We'll see you next week. 

25:52 - Intro (Announcement) Bye, guys, bye join us next week for another edition of vo boss, with your host and ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast-to-coast connectivity via IPDTL.