OK, so we all hate doing it, but book-keeping and accounts are one of those things that we simply can't escape.
Happily, things are about to get a lot easier. As part of Artquest's commitment to encouraging London's creative practitioners to become more self-reliant, proactive and professional, we've teamed up with Mycake to bring you the Mycake pilot project.
Mycake is an online bookkeeping and benchmarking service for creative professionals and small creative businesses.
It provides you with a hassle-free way to manage your budgets and evaluate your finances, all at a glance. From issuing and tracking invoices to monitoring your expenses, Mycake will give you a clear picture of your income and expenditure.
One of its most valuable features is its benchmarking capacity, where you can compare your accounts with other users in complete anonymity: a great way to see how you or your business is doing in relation to fellow practitioners at similar (or even later) stages in their careers.
Artquest are looking for London-based artists, craftspeople and other creative practitioners to get involved in the exciting pilot phase of the project's development.
Subscription costs £120 for year one. For more information about Mycake contact Sarah Thelwall via the Mycake home page.
In September MyCake and Artquest invited it's subscribers to take part in a short survey to build a picture of visual practitioners financial practices and needs. The results of the survey have started coming in.
A taster of some key statistics that emerged so far are over 58% of artists devote 3 days a week or less on their practice, 82% of you have a source of income outside of your practice (with lecturing, teaching and workshops coming top as to the source of this).
Unsurprisingly over 76% of you feel that your practice could do with more funding but encouragingly over 50% feel clued up about where to find this funding.
There's still time for you to complete the online survey here, and contribute to this valuable research (and be in the running to win an iPod shuffle). The final results will be appearing on the Artquest website in the coming months.
MyCake have also released the first Benchmarking figures from their users. Download the benchmarking bulletin here to find out how fellow creatives are managing with their money. This bulletin focuses on crafts practitioners.