The guide

Setting Up Your Books When You Rent a Chair

When you rent a chair, you run your own business. That means the money side is yours to track: what came in, what went out, and what you kept after rent and supplies.

You need a system you will keep up with, and this one takes a few minutes a week.

Separate your money first

Before anything else, keep your business money apart from your personal money. Open a second checking account and route all your tattoo income into it, and pay your business costs out of it.

• Your income and expenses are already sorted, so you are not untangling a grocery run from a needle order at the end of the year.
• You can see what the business earns without your rent and personal spending mixed in.
• If a question ever comes up about your numbers, you have a clean record instead of a guess.

A separate card for supplies and booth rent finishes the job. Every swipe on it is a business expense, which makes tracking close to automatic.

Track income as it comes in

Log every payment the day you take it, not from memory later. Cash, card, or app, it all counts, and cash is the one that goes missing if you wait. Record the amount, the date, how they paid, and the tip.

Logging as you go does two things. It keeps your income total honest, and it means the number is ready whenever you want to check where the month stands.

Track expenses the same way

Every business cost is worth recording, both because it tells you your real profit and because most of it is deductible. Keep the receipt and note what it was for. The main categories for a chair renter:

• Supplies: needles, ink, tubes, gloves, and everything else you go through.
• Booth rent you pay the shop.
• Card processing fees taken out of your payments.
• Equipment: machines, power supplies, and the gear that lasts.
• Licenses, permits, and certifications you keep current.
• Mileage for supply runs and any work driving.

For the full breakdown of what counts, see the complete list of tattoo artist write-offs.

Handle booth rent as a fixed cost

Booth rent is different from your other expenses because it is due on a schedule no matter how the week went. Plan around it as a fixed cost. Know your weekly or monthly rent as a flat number, and know how much income you need to cover it before you have earned a dollar for yourself.

If you are weighing whether renting a chair even beats a commission split, that is its own decision. We work through it in booth rent vs. commission.

Set money aside for taxes

As a chair renter you are self-employed, so nothing is withheld for you. Every time income comes in, move a percentage into a separate savings account and leave it there. A common starting point is 25% to 30%, but ask a tax professional what fits your situation.

If you move it as the money arrives, what you owe is waiting at tax time, and anything left over is yours.

Check your real profit every month

Once income and expenses are both tracked, you can work out your profit: income, minus expenses, minus booth rent, equals what you kept. Look at it once a month.

Checking this monthly, instead of once a year, is what lets you catch a slow stretch early, see a supply cost creeping up, and price your work based on what you keep rather than what the top-line number looks like.

Let the app keep the books

A notebook and a shoebox make this hard to keep up. In Inkperch you log each payment in a few seconds, snap receipts as you go and set your booth rent once, and Profit shows your month whenever you open it. At year end, export the whole thing in one file for your accountant.

This is general information for working artists, not tax or financial advice, and the rules change. Talk to a tax professional about your own situation. Separate your money and track it as you go.