Simple books for a voiceover business: cash, invoices and reserves

What to take away

Voiceover bookkeeping tracks cash, invoices and reserves.

This article covers general voiceover-business bookkeeping, not tax, contract or legal advice. Rates, rights and usage depend on several factors. These include the script, market, media, territory, term and performer status. Put terms in writing. Check with a CPA or an entertainment attorney.

A voiceover business runs on sessions, not on a salary. You book a job, record it, invoice it, and wait. The books answer one question at any moment: how much of the money in the account is yours to spend.

Set up three accounts, not one

Open a business checking account and a separate savings account for tax and reserves. Keep a third place, a spreadsheet or an accounting tool, for the ledger that ties them together.

The checking account takes client payments and pays booth costs, software, and your own draw. The savings account holds money you have not earned yet. The ledger records every session, invoice and expense so the two accounts reconcile.

Mercury, Bluevine and Novo all charge no monthly fee. Bluevine also pays a published APY on balances up to $250,000 when you meet its monthly activity requirement.

For the ledger, QuickBooks Online Simple Start lists around $35 a month, Xero's Early plan around $20, FreshBooks Lite around $20 to $25, and Bonsai around $25.

Wave's accounting is free, and its card processing runs 2.9 percent plus 60 cents per transaction. Google Sheets costs nothing and holds up until you have more than a handful of clients.

Do not run voiceover income through a personal account. When a client pays by card or platform, the deposit lands mixed with personal spending and the paper trail disappears.

Invoice every session the same way

A voiceover invoice needs six things:

Add a due date, commonly net 15 or net 30. A late fee of 1.5 percent a month is a common contract term.

State the usage in plain terms on the invoice: media, territory, term and whether it is a buyout or a licensed use. If the client asked for a revision or a pick-up, list it as its own line.

Send the invoice the day you deliver the file. Late invoicing is the most common reason narrators wait 60 days for money they earned in a week. Track each invoice as sent, due, paid or overdue.

Marketplace terms decide what actually lands. Fiverr keeps 20 percent of each order, so price for it. Voice123 and Voices.com charge talent an annual membership instead, typically $300 to $500 for a basic tier.

On direct card payments, Stripe charges 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per online charge, and PayPal charges 2.99 percent plus 49 cents. Wise converts foreign payments for a fee that starts near 0.4 percent on major currencies.

Sessions covered by SAG-AFTRA pay on the union's schedule. Membership carries base annual dues of roughly $230 plus a percentage of covered earnings.

Know what a session actually pays

Your rate is not your income. Subtract the platform or agent commission, the cost of the booth time, and the tax you will owe. What remains is the number that pays rent.

The arithmetic is simple once you name the variables: session fee minus commission minus direct cost minus tax set-aside equals take-home. Substitute your own figures. If a job's take-home falls below your floor, the rate is the problem, not your speed.

A 30-second regional radio spot that pays $300 leaves $210 after a 30 percent tax set-aside, before direct costs. The same spot through an agent who takes 20 percent pays $240 after commission and leaves $168 after a 30 percent tax set-aside, also before direct costs. Subtract each job’s direct costs before treating the balance as take-home.

Direct costs eat the rest. Reaper sells a discounted personal license for $60 and a commercial license for $225, and Adobe Audition runs about $23 a month. Audacity is free. Remote direction runs on Cleanfeed Pro, typically around $30 a month, or Source-Connect Standard, typically $40 to $60 a month.

For the tools that record, edit and track this work, see voiceover software reviewed for 2027.

Build a reserve before you build a draw

A voiceover calendar is uneven. Audiobook projects run for weeks, then nothing books for a fortnight. The reserve is what carries you across the gap.

Set aside a fixed percentage of every payment into the tax and reserve savings account. The IRS publishes what records you should keep and for how long at What kind of records should I keep?.

Self-employment tax is 15.3 percent of net earnings, and the Social Security portion applies only up to the annual wage base, $176,100 for 2025. Federal and state income tax sit on top. Quarterly estimates are due April 15, June 15, September 15 and January 15.

A common starting point is a repair reserve equal to one replacement microphone, plus one month of fixed costs. A Rode NT1 5th Generation lists around $259, a Shure SM7B around $399, and a Sennheiser MKH 416 around $1,000.

A Neumann TLM 103 runs about $1,200, and a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 interface about $200. Adjust the reserve to your own gear and overhead. The point is that the number is written down, not guessed.

Reconcile monthly, not annually

Once a month, open the bank feed beside your ledger and match every deposit to an invoice and every withdrawal to a receipt. Anything unmatched is either a missing invoice or a personal expense that leaked into the business account.

Reconciliation catches the two failures that hurt narrators most: a client who never paid, and a subscription you forgot you had. Both show up as a line with no partner.

Receipts are the other half. Photograph gear and software receipts into the same folder as the invoice they belong to, and note the client on anything you might deduct.

If you handle client files and logins, the NIST Small Business Quick-Start Guides and CISA guidance for small businesses cover basic account and data hygiene.

A worked month

Say you book four sessions in a month: two direct clients, one through an agent who takes a commission, and one audiobook at a per-finished-hour rate. The table fills in the direct session, the agent session and an eight-hour audiobook.

Replace the numbers with your own. The table is the whole method: gross, minus commission, minus cost, minus tax, equals what you keep.

Common questions

Do I need accounting software, or is a spreadsheet enough?

A spreadsheet works until you have more than a handful of clients and recurring expenses. Move to accounting software when matching invoices to deposits by hand starts taking an evening.

Wave is free, QuickBooks Online Simple Start is about $35 a month, FreshBooks Lite is about $20 to $25, and Bonsai is about $25. The ledger matters more than the tool.

How much should I hold in reserve?

Enough to cover one month of fixed costs plus one gear replacement. That figure is personal to your overhead, so calculate it from your own bills rather than copying a percentage from someone else's setup.

What records should I keep for voiceover work?

Keep invoices, session confirmations, usage terms, bank statements and receipts for booth and software costs. Ask a CPA how long to hold them for your situation.

The IRS generally asks for three years of records, four years for employment tax records, and longer in some cases. If you drive to a studio, the IRS standard mileage rate was 70 cents a mile for 2025.

Can I pay myself whenever I want?

Pay yourself a set draw on a set date from the business account. Random transfers make the ledger useless and hide whether the business is actually profitable. If the draw does not fit, the rate or the calendar needs work.