As a new small business owner, what should I know about tracking

No one does their taxes here? I'll just call the IRS.....

don't look for business advice on website with pictures of cocks on them.

>>1044424
OK, serious answer here.

I'm a programmer and I sell products.

You want to keep a table for inventory and sales at the very least. Each table breaks down the respective transactions into their smallest components. For example, I track item price, tax, fees, insurance, shipping vouchers, shipping cost, refunds, etc. Then at the end of the year (or tax period), all you really have to do is sum up some rows/columns.

Now I over complicated this and did it in SQL Server with some fancy calculations to calculate item cost on the fly to determine a gain/loss on every sale and print out price sheets and a ton of other things. But you can still do the core functionality (how much did I make this year, how much tax do I owe, etc) with Excel or another spreadsheet.

You definitely want to keep a box with all of your receipts and invoices. And you definitely want to keep a backup of your spreadsheet on CD/SSD/paper or something. Just in case because the IRS can audit you a few years back. May be naive here but I expect an audit isn't such a horror story for people that A) aren't immediately hostile towards government and B) are organized enough to prove profits/losses.

You should definitely not own your own business if you don't know anything about business.

>>1044462
Thanks for your advice, it is great.

Can I use Wave accounting for all of this, and not have to worry about using excel at all?

>>1044498
I'm not familiar with Wave. You can use any spreadsheet program though. Excel, Lotus, OO Calc, Google Sheets, etc. Or notebook paper if you have the time to do the calculations yourself.

>>1044462
>SQL
>Complicated

Will someone just develop an open source ERP already? Hint hint code monkey.