Quickbooks Chart of Accounts for Indie Record Labels

Many Indie artist simply start their own record label instead of sitting around waiting for a recording contract to fall in their lap. Starting a label is an exciting endeavor but there are several pesky, non-creative details that need to be tended to like, accounting…

Quickbooks has established itself as the the go to accounting solution for small businesses, including indie record labels. Quickbooks is pretty inexpensive, fairly simple to use and can be installed as software on a computer or used as a software as a service model (available through a web browser).

Setting up Quickbooks correctly before entering revenue or expense items is critical to your long-term ability to gain value from your accounting information. At some point it will become important to know how much money your label is making (or losing). Building a chart of accounts that captures the specific income and expense items related to running your label is the first step to getting Quickbooks setup.

Alyson Miller is a CPA who’s firm, Sound Accountants, specializes in accounting and business management for record labels and musicians. Alyson was kind enough to share with us a sample chart of accounts indie record labels can use to help setup their Quickbooks.

Here is a link to a publicly available sample Quickbooks chart of accounts posted in Google Docs. Hopefully, this information will help you get you moving in the right direction when it comes time to setup your accounting function.

There is a lot to learn about accounting for a record label but setting up an accurate chart of accounts is a great first step.