Excel for the One-Person Business

Tax season shouldn't require a panic. For solo business owners filing a Schedule C or operating as a single-member LLC, the gap between a shoebox of receipts and a clean set of books is not a software subscription — it's a Saturday afternoon and the right system. Excel for the One-Person Business builds that system from scratch. Twelve focused chapters walk through every piece: a workbook architecture with seven purpose-built sheets, a Schedule C-aligned chart of accounts, a sales log that handles Stripe and Square payouts correctly, an expense log with drop-down validation and a receipt-naming convention that survives an audit, a lightweight invoicing tracker with overdue flags, a 1099-NEC tracking habit that makes January painless, an IRS-grade mileage log, and a monthly bank reconciliation that closes to the penny. The monthly close takes 30 minutes. The quarterly estimated-tax calculation takes 15. The year-end tax package is a folder, not a crisis. This book does not teach accounting theory. It does not recommend software. It builds one working system, explains every decision in plain English, and tells readers honestly when they've outgrown it. If the business grosses under $200k and runs on one person, this spreadsheet is enough. Build it once. Run it every week. Own your numbers.