My imaginary friend Luisa has a problem.
She is a blogger, and makes most of her income from affiliate marketing. Her problem is that she would like to keep track of how much she makes from each affiliate source, but is not sure how to do that. Does she write it out on a piece of paper? Should she use an Xcel sheet? Should she just give up and hope she’s making money?
Well, she could do those things, or she could use a neat little feature in Xero bookkeeping software called “Tracking”.
She can set up a category, in her case it would be “Affiliate Marketing” and then add as many sub-categories as she needs (up to 100!). Luisa has Amazon.com, Etsy.com, BetsyRoss.com, WebsiteABC.com, and Priceline.com as affiliate partners.
She has logged into Xero to reconcile her bank statement. This is probably automatically uploaded for her through her bank, another useful Xero feature!
This is what the reconciling page looks like. For this example, since Luisa and her blog “Luisa’s Life Hacks” aren’t real, I have set up a fake account to show you how it works. It’s not too intimidating!
You can easily assign your bank transactions to your Affiliate Marketing category when you are reconciling your account. You choose the who, what, why, and the tracking category, if applicable.
Remember, your categories can be whatever you need them to be. And you can add to them at any time if you pick up a new affiliate.
Notice how easy it is? You are reconciling transactions anyway (which basically means telling them where they “live” in your Chart of Accounts apartment building – Read more about your COA here), and it’s just one extra click to keep track of which affiliate deposited money in your account.
Once you are all caught up with reconciling your transactions, you can head on over to the “reports” section of Xero and find out just how much each affiliate has made for you.
If you are a blogger and want an easy way to keep track of your various income streams, doing it through Xero is a good way to go. You will not only keep your finances in order, but you can easily see which affiliate is making the most money for you. That’s a win-win in my book!
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