Record Keeping

Here is a tip that will save you a lot of money – keep goods records in relation to your web presence.

Keep three files:

File #1 – All your account usernames and passwords. Keep everything on one sheet of paper. Your domain registrar account, your webhosting FTP account, your blog admin and password, everything. Some of these things you won’t need for years at a time, and thus the are easy to lose.

File #2 – A copy of all your invoices for web hosting, web development, web design etc. Break out this file by projects and maintenance. You should be able to break this out in your accounting software, but I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve seen who charge all this to their credit card and never look at what they spend and where they spend it – it just gets lumped into the credit card expenses.

File #3 – A file that holds one or more CD’s or DVD’s with the .eps files of your logos, the code for your website, drafts of your final emails, etc. Even if you do this, chances are you might want to back things up in other places too. Remember to refresh these disks with new copies every year, as burnable CD’s and DVD’s degrade after about three years.