Two sheets for a small shop: expenses and quotes

A one-person shop usually loses track in two different places. Receipts live in a camera roll, so nobody can say what the month cost. Quotes live in email, so nobody can say how often a bid turns into work. Those are different lists. Putting them in one tab feels efficient until a proposal gets added into “expenses” and your profit is fiction.

Use two workbooks. One is the year of money that actually moved. The other is the year of offers. This note is how they fit together. It is not tax advice, and it is not a legal opinion about your entity.

What belongs in the expense file

Log income and expenses apart. A client payment is income. A supply run is an expense. A quote you have not won is neither.

For expenses, one row is one receipt: date, vendor, amount, category, how you paid, and a note. Categories can be named like common Schedule C Part II lines — advertising, contract labor, insurance, office, rent, supplies, travel, meals, and so on — because that is a familiar sort order for many US sole proprietors. Rename them if your accountant uses a different chart. An LLC taxed another way may not file Schedule C at all. The labels are a sorting guide. They are editable. They are not a ruling on what you can deduct.

Once a month, read income, expenses by category, total expenses, and net (income minus expenses). That net is not “cash you can spend,” not “profit after tax,” and not a payroll figure. It is the arithmetic of what you logged. If the log is behind, the net is behind.

Hand the year to a preparer as rows plus totals. They will reclass some lines. The file’s job is to make that a short meeting instead of a reconstruction.

The longer version of this method is in Track LLC expenses without pretending it is a tax return.

What belongs in the quote file

One row per estimate. Number it the day you draft it. Status is Draft, Sent, Won, Lost, or Expired. Days open count from the sent date. A follow-up flag comes on after seven days if the row is still Sent. You can change the seven. Do not change it by ignoring the flag.

Win rate uses decided rows only: Won divided by Won + Lost + Expired. Sent is pipeline, not a win and not a loss. Value won is the sum of Won amounts. Pipeline is the sum of Sent amounts. Split both by service. A high win rate on small calls and a low one on the work you actually want is the number worth seeing.

The longer version is in Track quotes so follow-ups and win rate are visible.

How the two files talk, without being the same file

When a quote is marked Won, the amount does not automatically become income. Income happens when they pay, and it belongs on the income side of the expense workbook, ideally with the quote number in the note. If you copy the won amount into income on the day they say yes, you will count money that has not arrived.

When you spend money to deliver that job, the receipt goes on the expense sheet with the quote number in the note if you want job-level cost later. Do not put the receipt on the quote row. The quote row’s amount should stay the price you offered, or the revised price if the scope changed, with a note. Job cost is a different question: price won minus the receipts you tagged with that number. You can add that up with a filter. You do not need a third system on day one.

Once a month, sit with both dashboards for fifteen minutes.

1. Quote file: anything flagged for follow-up gets a note sent or a status of Expired.
2. Quote file: win rate and pipeline by service. One slow service is allowed to bother you.
3. Expense file: uncategorized rows get a category before you close the laptop.
4. Expense file: income, total expenses, net. Compare net with what you thought the won work was worth. If you win work and the net is thin, the quote prices are the problem, not the color of the chart.
5. Do not delete a lost quote or a ugly expense to improve the picture.

A tiny example

March quotes: one won service call at 400, one lost remodel at 8,000, one sent repair at 1,200 that is nine days old. Win rate on decided work is 1/2. Pipeline is 1,200. Value won is 400.

March money: the 400 was paid, so income is 400. Supplies for that call were 45. Software was 30. Net of what you logged is 325. The 8,000 never hits income. The 1,200 does not hit income until it is won and then paid.

If you had dropped the lost remodel into a single “sales” cell, March would look like a disaster or a triumph depending on your mood. Two sheets stop that.

Limits

Neither file files a return, calculates estimated tax, or tells you whether a meal was deductible. Schedule C-style names can go stale when the form changes. This is not tax advice. Talk to a qualified tax professional before you file. The quote log will not email the client. The expense log will not scan a receipt unless you attach it yourself.

The starter bundle is those two workbooks in one download: the LLC expense tracker for 2027 (expenses, editable Schedule C-style categories, monthly profit summary) and the quote log (numbers, follow-ups, win rate, pipeline). Buying them together costs less than buying each file on its own. Formulas only, no macros. Excel and Google Sheets. Organizational tools only. Not tax advice. The link is in the box below.