Maintaining daily financial records will not be a challenging task if you develop a system. If you don’t use business software to track income and expenses, it can easily be accomplished with the simple bookkeeping steps of entering income and expenses. Simply recording the money that comes in and the money that goes out accounts for about 90 percent of the record-keeping task. A bookkeeping ledger or notebook tablet is sufficient to record daily items.

Record each day's transactions of sales, expenses and purchases on a page of the ledger or notebook. If there are not enough items in one day to fill the page, use it for two or more days.

Allow one page for expenses such as rent or mortgage payments, utility payments and other expenses that pertain to the upkeep and maintenance of the shop or building housing the business.

Set up another page for automotive expenses. Use this page to record gas and oil purchases, insurance payments and automotive repairs. Include any other vehicle-related expenses.

Set up several pages in the back of the ledger on which you will record the totals. At the end of each week, record the total. Record the monthly total on a separate page at the end of each month. At the end of the year, add the monthly amounts to determine annual totals.