How to do bookkeeping for self-employed personal trainers

Becoming a self-employed personal trainer means handling your own bookkeeping. You’ll be recording transactions, preparing accounts for taxes, tracking cash flow, and producing profit and loss statements. 

It can seem like a lot at first, so in order to help you with your bookkeeping, this guide will cover all of the bookkeeping basics you’ll need to know as a self-employed personal trainer, including:

• Client information.
• Invoicing.
• Recording transactions.
• Categorising expenses.
• Accounts receivable.
• Preparing for taxes.
• Cash flow. 
• Profit and loss statements.
• Opening a business current account. 

If you’d like some broader advice on starting your own personal training business, check out our other article, “How to be a self-employed personal trainer”.

As your business grows, you’re going to collect more and more clients. Because those clients are your actual source of income, keeping track of their information is an essential part of effective bookkeeping. 

You’ll need to record their contact information, the hours and dates you worked with them, and the rates you’ve charged. Accurate records like these will make things much easier when it comes to invoicing clients, and preparing those income records for taxes. 

As mentioned earlier, invoicing will play an important role when you’re self-employed, and getting better at it will ensure you’re paid on time with fewer mistakes. 

Creating invoices for every client can be tedious, but you can make it a lot simpler by using the Countingup app. 

With the Countingup app, you can: 

• Create an unlimited number of customised invoices.
• Add a logo to invoice templates.
• Send invoices to customers.
• Receive a notification when an invoice is paid.
• Match a payment to an invoice.
• Duplicate an invoice.
• Change an invoice’s due date.

Creating invoices on the go will save you loads of time and stress, and the invoices will be recorded on your app so you can check them whenever you need to. 

Good bookkeeping isn’t just about invoices. Recording all of your business transactions is essential if you’re going to prepare your income and expenses for your tax return, see profit and loss figures, and make well-informed financial decisions.

To make things simpler, a business current account, like Countingup, will keep an exact record of all of your business transactions. 

The account can be viewed from your phone via the Countingup app. And, because it’s a separate business account, you won’t have to differentiate between personal and business transactions. You can check your accounts wherever you are, and they’ll be stored whenever you need them. 

Keeping track of your business expenses will allow you to claim tax relief when you submit a self-assessment tax return. You can claim expenses that are wholly and exclusively for the purposes of your business. 

But first, you need to keep an accurate record of those expenses and sort them into categories. The Countingup app’s automatic expense categorisation and receipt capture tool make it simple to keep an accurate, digital record of your business expenses. 

You can just take a quick snapshot of all your receipts, then they’ll be categorised into HMRC approved categories.

Accounts receivable is an accounting term that refers to money that your business is owed. Any time you invoice a client, and they haven’t paid yet, the amount is recorded as accounts receivable. The value is still recorded as an owned asset even though you don’t have it yet. 

This is a totally normal part of doing business, our main tip is to stay on top of accounts like these. Try to make sure your clients pay on time, otherwise your business’ cash flow could suffer. 

We’ve already mentioned why recording your transactions is important for reporting your taxes. But that Countingup app can actually give you tax estimates all year round, so you’ll know exactly how much you need to set aside. 

If you hire an accountant, you can also share your bookkeeping data with them whenever they need it, making both your lives easier. They can even file your tax return directly using Countingup’s accounting software. 

Cash flow is the term used to describe the money flowing in and out of your business, and keeping track of it is a big part of bookkeeping.

By accurately recording your cash flow, you can produce profit and loss statements for your personal trainer business. 

A profit and loss statement is a financial report that shows all your ingoings and outgoings. It’ll show you your net income (often called the bottom line) and whether you’ve made or lost money over a period of time. 

With up-to-date cash flow insights, and accurate profit and loss statements, you can learn a lot about how your business is doing financially and how to improve it. Normally, doing this takes time, but Countingup makes it quick and easy. 

Countingup is currently the only business current account that lets you view your cash flow in real-time because it’s combined with accounting software in one app. There’s no data lag, so you know the cash flow insights are always up-to-date, allowing you to produce the most accurate profit and loss statements with ease. 

Financial management can be stressful and time-consuming when you’re self-employed. That’s why thousands of business owners use the Countingup app to make their financial admin easier. 

Countingup is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. With features like automatic expense categorisation, invoicing on the go, receipt capture tools, tax estimates, and cash flow insights, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances wherever you are. 

You can also share your bookkeeping with your accountant instantly without worrying about duplication errors, data lags or inaccuracies. Seamless, simple, and straightforward! 

Find out more here.