Cash transactions + potential auditing

[XXVV]

Hi everyone,

I currently have an ecommerce site selling items of clothing, but I also produce and write music, and works of art on the side, as well as making scented candles! Obviously accounting for all this in my self assessment is a massive chore. Currently most of my sales for art and music isn’t in cash, word of mouth etc. Whereas Candles + clothing is all online - for these cash sales, they make up the majority of my income but I am still putting it all through legit as I’m very paranoid about auditing etc due to having a house etc....how would I explain this income without any records of customers? It seems difficult to keep a record of every random person who buys my items from a pop up stall or just message someone me through Instagram for my artwork, as neither of these have any proof of an actual person being behind the transaction...somebody made a joke to me about art being used for money laundering so now I’m very concerned as to how to make sure that this isn’t ever suspected of my business! Has this ever been an issue for anyone else else?

 

[Scalloway]

What I would do for each day or week, depending on how many sales there are, is have a sheet with the date and location of the sales. I'd use this to enter the amount of cash received and banked. Is it possible to use a cash register for the pop up stalls?

 

[duggimon]

You don't need to record who bought your goods, just record the date, what you sold and how much for, that's all any shop is required to do. If you're selling small numbers of high priced items then more details and perhaps proper sales invoices would be appropriate but for large numbers of low value transactions your customers can be anonymous.

 

[XXVV]

Yeah cash register is good idea, I’ll have to see if i can find a cheap and cheerful one just to be safe! And thanks for the advice duggimon!