If there is one factor that keeps many individuals away from taking the decision of starting their own pay per head bookie businesses is a concern about cash.
In case you are one of these individuals with sports betting entrepreneurial dreams, where is the money that you need to get started coming from?
Are you able to quit your job in order to dedicate yourself full time to run your bookmaking operation?
The key to answering these and other related questions is financial management, which requires the proper bookkeeping and regular attention to the company’s figures.
Pay per Head Bookie: Financial Organization
Money can serve many objectives in a pay per head bookie business, and if you play your cards right, it can make you, or, on the contrary, if you fail to focus on the numbers, it can also break you.
If your goal is to grow a successful home-based bookmaking company, you need to stop keeping your cash in a shoebox and start keeping a good record of the money that comes in, and the funds that go out.
When you keep your finances properly organized you can:
- Figure out where your pay per head bookie operation stands (is your business making you cash? Are your expenditures not in line with your profits?).
- Apply for loans from either a bank, or an angel investor.
- Provide accurate financial statements to people that may be interested in becoming partners of your sports betting organization.
Operating out of a shoebox is certainly not going to allow you to do those things, so you need to start thinking like a real businessman.
This means that you need to manage your finances properly, and if you can’t do this on your own because of a lack of knowledge, or because you simply don’t want to, then your best bet is to hire the services of a professional and trustful bookkeeper or accountant.
Apart from finding peace of mind by knowing that the right individual is taking care of the figures related to your pay per head bookie business, hiring an accountant also allows you to count with more extra time to do what’s in your best interest: finding new clients on a regular basis.
Setting Up a Business Account
Experts believe that using the same bank account for personal and business purposes is definitely not a good idea.
This is mainly because keeping track of separate expenditures and incoming cash related to personal or professional matters can get tricky if all the money is coming from the same account.
However, you can easily avoid this by opening up a bank account that is going to be used strictly for business purposes.
If you already have a savings account, creating a new account for your company shouldn’t come as a difficult task at all.
Just follow the same steps that you did before with your personal account, and figure out if you want both of your accounts to be part of the same bank, or if you prefer to handle your personal and professional finances using different banking institutions.
The 2 Most Important Financial Statements
When it comes to having your finances in order, there are two statements that you should pay special attention to: the income statement and the balance sheet.
The Income Statement
This document is where you add measurements related to how profitable your pay per head bookie business is.
In other words, this statement lets you know how much cash is left over after adding up all the expenses.
An income statement reveals:
- The real sales volume of a business over a specific period of time.
- The actual expenses for a given period of time.
- The difference between the previous two pointers.
The Balance Sheet
Accounting can be defined with a simple formula: assets – liabilities = equity.
- The assets of your pay per head bookie company includes money, and stuff that can be turned into more money.
- Liabilities are your obligations as the owner of the bookmaking company, including loans and debts to bettors.
- Equity is the real net worth of your betting and gaming business after all liabilities have been subtracted.
This is the kind of important information that is included in the balance sheet.
Choosing a Bookkeeping System
Although you may be an old school guy that loves Microsoft Excel and have chosen this as your bookkeeping tool, the truth is that there are better accounting software programs out there which can deliver more efficient results, and that prevents you from having to create your own spread sheets.
The top systems used by most accounting professionals include Quicken, QuickBooks, and Peachtree Accounting.
For example, the free version of QuickBooks allows you to do things such as:
- Tracking expenses, paying bills and printing checks.
- Tracking payments and invoicing clients.
- Generating financial reports, including profits versus losses, cash flow, sales and current overall balance.
- Managing payroll.
This particular free version of QuickBooks is only good if you are planning to run a small pay per head bookie operation with no more than 20 clients, so, if your business plans are much bigger, you should consider acquiring the paid version, which includes more capable options.
