Money & Bookkeeping

Weekly Money Hour Card

Companion to "The weekly money hour."

Sixty minutes, same slot every week, agenda fixed. My slot: . If it regularly runs past sixty minutes, the cure is simplification, not a ninety-minute event.

The seven steps, in order

☐ Reconcile. Every transaction since last week into view; flag anything you cannot identify now, while it is days old. This is also the fraud alarm
☐ Categorize. One label per transaction from the bucket list below. Ten buckets maximum
☐ Move the set-aside. Transfer your percentage of the week's deposits to the Tax account; if automated, verify it fired
☐ Invoice and chase. Send every invoice not yet sent; one polite reminder on every overdue one
☐ Capture receipts and miles. Photograph the week's paper receipts into one monthly folder; update the mileage log (a log, not a guess in April; the 2026 rate rose midyear, 72.5 cents to 76 cents from July, so look it up at its source)
☐ Update the three numbers. Cash on hand, net margin, revenue per hour, written into the running log
☐ Decide one thing. One money decision for the coming week: a price to raise, a cost to cut, a purchase to defer or release. One, not five

Ten-bucket starter list

1. Income	2. Supplies	3. Fuel and vehicle
4. Software	5. Insurance	6. Fees
7. Professional help	8.	9.

The point is honest monthly totals, not a taxonomy that would impress an accountant. Fill buckets 8 to 10 only if your business demands them.

This week's one decision

Week of
The one decision (price / cost / purchase)
Overdue invoices chased
Set-aside moved: $ at %	☐ Done same day

Log row template (copy weekly)

Date	Cash on hand	Months of cover	Net margin	Revenue per hour	One decision
	$		%	$

Skipping the hour does not postpone the truth, it only removes your chance to respond to it while responding is cheap. The owners who quit were rarely the ones who looked at bad numbers weekly. They were the ones who looked at them once, in April, all at once, far too late.

Why weekly: memory decays in days, invoices age fastest in their first days, and problems are cheapest within a week of appearing. The monthly version costs less time and more money, every time.