Monday Morning Accounts: Running a Business on a Kitchen Table
A Gold Coast independent spends her Monday doing the unglamorous paperwork of her business, and discovers a surprising pride in the spreadsheets, receipts and plans nobody else ever sees.
Nobody puts Mondays in the movies. The movies are all about the evening: the dress, the hotel, the champagne. Nobody films a woman in trackpants at her kitchen table in Burleigh at eight in the morning with a pot of coffee, a pile of receipts and a laptop that needs a new battery.
But this is the part of my job that keeps the rest of it standing.
The routine
Every Monday, before I open the phone for the week, I do the same things in the same order:
- Reconcile last week's income against my booking diary.
- Log every expense with its receipt: linen service, advertising, phone, photographer, the new lamp I bought for the incall.
- Move my tax percentage into the separate savings account, before I'm tempted to see it as spending money.
- Update my client notes with anything useful, such as preferences, boundaries discussed, and who is always on time.
- Plan the week's hours and block out at least two full days off.
It takes about two hours. I put on an album, usually something old and soulful, and let the sea breeze through the flyscreen.
What I noticed today
Looking back at the quarter, I realised I've been working more hours for roughly the same money. I dug in and found it: shorter bookings, more travel for outcalls up the highway, more time lost to cancellations. So I made some decisions on the spot. A slightly longer minimum booking. A travel fee north of Southport. A firmer deposit policy. Nothing dramatic, just adjustments.
Five years ago I would have been too frightened to change anything in case people went elsewhere. Now I know that the right clients respect a clear, fair structure. The ones who don't were never going to be easy anyway.
The quiet pride
When I first started, I thought the job was being charming. It is, partly. But it's also marketing, bookkeeping, scheduling, customer service, safety management and self-care, all done by one person with no manager and no HR department.
At ten-thirty I closed the laptop, rinsed the coffee pot, and went for a swim at the beach. Floating on my back beyond the break, looking up at a completely clean blue sky, I thought: I built this. Not the glamorous part. The real part. And it holds.
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