How to Track Your Photography Income and Expenses
How to Track Your Photography Income and Expenses
It's the end of a busy month. You shot six weddings and four engagement sessions, and your wallet shows a number that looks good. Then someone asks what you kept after the assistant, the fuel and the albums, and you can't answer.
Most photographers we talk to are in the same spot. They know what came in and can't say what stayed. Without the numbers, you decide by feel: you take a cheap booking because the month is quiet, or you buy a lens because your Instapay balance looks healthy.
Four numbers tell you where the studio stands. If you log daily, thirty minutes at month-end covers the rest.
A note on figures: every amount in this post is a worked example, not a market average.
Where the profit goes
Revenue gets mistaken for profit
Revenue is what reached your account. Profit is what's left after you pay for the work. A studio that collected 40,000 EGP in a month may keep 12,000 once crew, travel and printing are paid. The first figure feels like success. The second tells you whether the business works at this shape.
Small costs go unrecorded
You remember the assistant's fee, the studio rent and the album. You forget the fuel, the cloud storage renewal, the transfer fees and the memory card you bought the Thursday before a wedding. Each one is small. Over a month they can add up to the fee for a whole booking.
Payments arrive through three channels
The deposit comes on Instapay, the second payment in cash on the wedding day, the balance on Vodafone Cash after delivery. Each channel keeps its own history and none of them knows which booking the money belongs to. When you sit down to reconcile, memory is your only record.
The four numbers to check every month
1. Revenue you collected
If you signed five weddings worth 100,000 EGP and took 35,000 in deposits, this month's revenue is 35,000. Counting contract value as revenue gives you cash on paper that you can't spend. Log each payment's date, amount and method, and keep each client's outstanding balance in its own column.
2. Costs per booking
This number changes how you price. Tie each cost to the booking that caused it (assistant, transport, printing, album) and some packages turn out thinner than they looked. An 8,000 EGP booking that cost 5,500 to deliver leaves a small margin, however good the number looked when the client signed.
3. Fixed monthly costs
Rent, subscriptions, internet, equipment instalments. Add them up and divide by your average bookings per month. With 12,000 EGP in fixed costs and six bookings a month, each booking has to cover 2,000 EGP before it earns anything.
4. Profit per booking
Take the booking price, subtract its direct costs, then subtract its share of fixed costs. Run that on your last ten bookings and sort them. You'll likely find one kind of shoot brings most of the profit while another eats most of your time.
Expense categories for a photography studio
Categories let you compare one month with the next and see where the money leaks. These cover most of what a studio spends:
Crew: assistant, second shooter, lighting tech, video editor.
Transport: fuel, ride-hailing, travel to a wedding in another city, hotel.
Gear: lenses, batteries, memory cards, camera servicing.
Printing and production: albums, frames, packaging, delivery to the client.
Rental: studio time, rented lights, a lens hired for the day.
Software: cloud storage, editing tools, studio management.
Marketing: Instagram ads, design, a shoot for your own portfolio.
If a cost comes up more than three times a year, give it its own category.
A thirty-minute monthly routine
Log each payment the day it arrives. Leaving it for month-end is how records go missing. Write the amount, date, method and client.
Photograph each receipt when you pay. A phone photo is enough if you file it under the booking it belongs to.
Assign each cost to a booking or to fixed costs. A cost attached to nothing tells you nothing later.
Review the four numbers on the last day of the month. Thirty minutes does it when logging is daily.
Compare with last month. Flat revenue and rising costs mean your margin is shrinking, even if the balance looks fine.
Instapay, Vodafone Cash and cash in one record
In Egypt one booking can be paid through three channels. Your Instapay history shows that money arrived. It won't show which booking it was for, or whether it was the deposit or the second instalment. So record the payment on your side first, against the client, the booking and the instalment, and use the bank history to check your work.
A contract with a clear payment schedule makes this easier, because tracking becomes a match between what's due and what arrived. The photography contract template covers how to write that schedule, and tracking Instapay and Vodafone Cash payments walks through the matching step by step.
From a spreadsheet to a system
A spreadsheet is a fine start and far better than nothing. It strains as bookings grow. You skip an update after a long shoot day, the columns collapse when you open it on your phone, and finding one client's balance takes ten minutes.
In Lnsly each payment is logged on its booking with its method (cash, Instapay, Vodafone Cash, bank transfer), and you add the booking's costs to the same record. The booking page then shows its price, its costs and the difference. The share of fixed costs is still yours to work out, as described above.
Once you know the real profit on each booking, the next job is your prices. The guide to pricing photography packages in Egypt picks up from there.
Frequently asked questions
When should I start tracking properly?
With your first paid booking. Every month without records is pricing data you won't get back.
Do I need an accountant?
Not at first. You need consistent logging. An accountant earns their fee once volume grows or tax obligations start.
How do I split a cost shared by two bookings?
Divide it between them. If you travel to shoot two bookings on the same day, split the travel cost. A rough split beats no record.
Should I count my own pay as a cost?
Yes, if you want to know what the studio earns as a business and not only what you take home. Set a fair rate for your hours and log it as a cost. What remains is the studio's profit.
Money tracking starts with the bookings themselves. If bookings slip away before anyone pays, start with 7 reasons photographers lose bookings. For a clean receipt on every payment, use the photography invoice template.
