Business day - Creating Inventory spreadsheet for artwork.

 OK! Had to deal with the business of being a real artist. I had to go and do a full inventory of all of my work that is here in the Studio, storage and hanging on the walls of the house. Pictures, measurements, descriptions and Cost Of Goods. Sure glad that I have a business background or Cost of Goods would have driven me crazy.

 Put it all in an Excel spreadsheet with all the correct formulas to calculate my cost of inventory and other such things. Sure will make dealing with taxes this year and next a lot easier. It also helped me see how much work I have created in a year and to see where of it went and how much I made in profit. None yet... Sucks but at least I will know when that corner will be turned. My Spreadsheet will tell me so...

I read and reread the book "ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career" by Heather Darcy Bhandari, Jonathan Melber. While it talks a lot about how to deal with Art Gallery's and other stuff, it was very clear that we as business owners and producers that we must take care of business or some one else will do it to you if you are not careful. 

Since I'm trying to sell online and in local shows I do not need the Art Gallery section yet but its handy to know and they have lots of legal information there that all artists should pay attention to.

Also the web site http://www.artstaxinfo.com/artists helped me with all the tax implications of selling art and how to pay sales tax etc.

All good stuff and nice to know but I've got 3 days to finish a painting for the next show. So...

Here is a view of what I put together to keep track of my work and inventory.

 If you would like to have a copy of the spread sheet cut and paste this link into your web browser and you can then use my Google Drive to down load the file. 

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-syyxfjlYK2MXhHS1R2RklaWmM/edit