Keeping the Books for Your Gas Station Business or Convenience Store

Accounting & Book Keeping – The Number Game we Love…NOT!

Here Is a simplified version of a monthly Profit and Loss Statement done in Microsoft Excel.

Profit & Loss Report, December 2012

You are doing everything right, by the book but do you know if you are in red or black? Maintaining the books for your gas station business and convenience store is just as important as keeping products on your shelves to sell. The accounting for a C-store is simple, you keep a monthly tally of all the vendors you paid to buy your merchandise and gasoline, keep track of all your sales and all the expenses you occurred for that month. The simple math is sales –purchase = gross profit

Gross profit – all expenses = Net profit

There are number of ways you can do accounting for your gas station business and convenience store, you can hire a bookkeeper, to do your books than take it to an accountant for all your tax needs, or you can hire an accountant or lastly you can do all that by yourself, if you are willing to spend 15 minutes day.  You will need some type of accounting software and there are many good ones out there (some examples like quick books and such).

A typical gas station business and convenience store accounting should look something like this (attach a balance sheet, and a P&L and explain the basics of those numbers)

One important thing to remember is do count all your inventory once a month, preferably  on the last day of the month or the 1^st day of the month, this will help you many ways from accounting point of view to determining if you are having theft. There are many small companies that typically charge $100-$150 a month to count inventory in a typical gas stations and they provide you with a nicely categorized easy to read report.

Sample Personal Financial Statement

To download a fully working copy of a  Personal Financial Statement that you can just fill in the blanks, click here (In Microsoft Excel format)

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