All accounting basics, latest first.
EBIT explained in three minutes, for people who skipped business school
A no-jargon walkthrough: revenue minus COGS, minus daily-pro-rated fixed costs. That's it. We promise. Aimed at café, retail, salon and e-commerce owners running on intuition.
Ibrahim Ölmez
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09 May
Three spreadsheet sins, ranked. (And the one redemption.)
The three mistakes I see in nearly every shop spreadsheet I've ever inherited — mixing gross and net, hiding rent, and never reconciling the till — plus the small habit that fixes all of them.
Ibrahim Ölmez
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01 May
COGS vs. COGS percentage: which one actually tells you something
COGS is a euro number — what it cost to make what you sold today. COGS percentage is that number divided by revenue. The euro tells you what happened; the percentage tells you whether it should have happened that way.
Ibrahim Ölmez
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17 Apr
VAT for small business: what owner-operators actually need to know
VAT is a tax you collect on behalf of the government — it was never yours. Most spreadsheet errors I see are owners treating VAT-inclusive sales as revenue. Here's how it works, what to put in your P&L, and where the traps hide.
Ibrahim Ölmez
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02 Apr
Gross vs. net revenue: the difference that changes how you price
Gross revenue is what the customer paid. Net revenue is what stayed with the business after VAT and card fees came off. The gap is usually 22-25% — and pricing decisions made from the gross number quietly lose money on every sale.
Ibrahim Ölmez
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21 Mar
Depreciation for non-accountants: why the oven counts as an expense for seven years
When you buy a €7.000 oven, you don't expense €7.000 in one day. You expense roughly €83/month for seven years. It's called depreciation, and it's the bridge between "I paid for something big" and "the cost shows up daily."
Ibrahim Ölmez
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07 Mar
Accrual vs. cash basis accounting: which one your shop should actually use
Cash basis records money when it moves; accrual records it when it's earned. Cash is simpler for tax. Accrual is honest about what each day actually made. For most small shops the answer is: file taxes on cash, run the business on accrual.
Ibrahim Ölmez
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18 Feb
What "fixed costs" actually means (and the four kinds owner-operators always miss)
Fixed costs are the bills that show up whether you sell anything or not — rent, salaries, insurance, the gym-membership-equivalents of running a shop. Most owners track three of them and miss four. Here's the full list.
Ibrahim Ölmez
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04 Feb
How to read a P&L statement: a line-by-line walkthrough for owner-operators
A profit & loss statement is a story read top-to-bottom: how much came in, what got spent, what's left. Once you can name every line, you can spot the one that's drifting before it costs you a month.
Ibrahim Ölmez
·
22 Jan
A chart of accounts that survives a real café or retail shop
A chart of accounts is the named list of buckets every transaction in your business falls into. Most templates have 80+ accounts; a working shop needs 25-30. Here's a stripped-back chart that maps cleanly onto daily P&L decisions.
Ibrahim Ölmez
·
08 Dec