Comments on: How I Track My Expenses

By: Dis Great Month - Jon Waraas Blog

Dis Great Month - Jon Waraas Blog — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:51:11 +0000

[...] to how much profit I made etc. So I will know at all times how I am doing. If you remeber I added a tracking system to track my expenses, and so far the effort I put into that project has paid off.. its nice to be able to [...]

By: Web Design Beach

Web Design Beach — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:25:06 +0000

It’s really interesting to see you have made a custom application to track expanses. I would always be enough with some self built excel document, but i guess i never had so much various expanses to separate and track them more deeply.

By: Synchronium

Synchronium — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:22:56 +0000

Spam comment? I get tonnes of shit like that in my spam queue…

By: Jon Waraas

Jon Waraas — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:52:20 +0000

huh?

By: used rv for sale

used rv for sale — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:37:59 +0000

She already receives financial aid, but in order for us to keep paying our bills we will need her portion of income to continue.

By: Jon Waraas

Jon Waraas — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:06:36 +0000

Oh haha yeah i def know you then sorry I didnt recognize your screen name.

By: Synchronium

Synchronium — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:30:50 +0000

Actually I do code. We’ve spoken about it on MSN before (I run Coffeesh0p.com)

And yes, I do use MySQL, for no reason other than it’s what I’ve always used, and pretty much every web host has it installed.

Pro tip: Create a database abstraction layer, so you just have to use $datalayer->query( $sql ); instead of functions specific to the DB you use. Then if you ever need to change the DB, you only need to alter the abstraction object rather than the database-specific code which would be all over your application.

By: Jon Waraas

Jon Waraas — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:40:08 +0000

Hey thanks for piping in. I like to focus on the profit margin a lot because increasing that will increase my profits. I can use my statistics to see what needs to be done to get the margin down and increase profits.

If you could code would you use mysql? (im assuming you dont code :-s )

By: Synchronium

Synchronium — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 08:36:47 +0000

I use a spreadsheet. Dead simple to make copies of & back up, it does everything I need it to and I didn’t have to code anything.

The one advantage to keeping it in a database (whether that’s MS Access, or MySQL + PHP front end) is that you can SELECT specific transactions, or SELECT groups of similar transactions, which obviously isn’t possible with a flat-file spreadsheet.

Also, I wouldn’t focus too much on profit margin. Some of the more expensive items I sell have a smaller margin, but because they’re so much more expensive, that works out to a larger sum of money. Certainly keep an eye on your margin, but it’s not the most important thing.