← OG Academy · Business basics · 5 min de leitura
Invoices and simple bookkeeping for artists
You do not need accounting software. You need one folder, one spreadsheet and fifteen minutes a month.
What an invoice must contain
Your name and address, your registration and VAT number if you have them, the buyer's details, an invoice number, the date, a description of the work, the amount, the VAT rate applied, and the total.
Number invoices sequentially and never skip a number. That single habit satisfies most of what an inspection will ever ask.
The fifteen-minute system
One spreadsheet with two tabs: money in and money out. Date, description, amount, VAT, and a link to the receipt. One cloud folder with a subfolder per year for the documents themselves.
Do it on the first Monday of the month with a coffee. Fifteen minutes monthly is far easier than two days in January.
What you can usually deduct
Materials, framing, studio rent, part of your home costs if you work from home, courses, art books, travel to exhibitions, website and domain costs, camera equipment, and packaging.
Keep the proof and note briefly why it was for your practice. Rules differ per country, so verify the details locally.
Keep an artwork register too
Number, title, year, size, materials, price, buyer and date sold. This is not tax admin; it is your archive, and in twenty years it will be the only reliable record of your own body of work.
It also makes certificates, insurance and any future retrospective vastly easier.
Em resumo
Sequential invoices with the required details, one spreadsheet and one folder updated monthly, photographed receipts, and a lifelong register of your works.