The average full-time creator we meet earns from four or five places at once — and keeps track of it in zero of them. Payouts land in a personal account, mixed with rent and groceries, and January becomes archaeology. Here's the system that fixes it, permanently, in about a week.
1. Separate the money
One business bank account; every platform pays into it; business costs come out of it. This single move does more for your bookkeeping than any app. (Our packages include a free Mettle account by NatWest — built for exactly this.)
2. Let the bank feed do the typing
Connect the account to FreeAgent (included, worth up to £330/yr) and transactions flow in and categorise themselves — AdSense to ad revenue, Patreon to subscriptions, the camera shop to equipment. Receipts get photographed at purchase, not hunted in January.
3. Reconcile platforms monthly, gross to net
Once a month, ten minutes: check each platform's statement against what landed. Record income gross with fees as expenses — the accurate picture, and the one VAT eventually depends on. Catch the drifts (a withheld payout, a fee change, US withholding you shouldn't be paying) while they're one month old, not fourteen.
4. Log the non-cash income
Gifted collabs go in the log with a retail value — thirty seconds per deal, and your barter income is audit-proof.
5. Watch two numbers
Your live tax liability (FreeAgent shows it building — move that slice to a tax pot monthly) and your rolling 12-month turnover against the £90,000 VAT line. Everything else is commentary.
Set up once, this runs on ~30 minutes a month — and it's precisely what we set up for every new client in week one. From £19 + VAT a month, software included.
