Our Profit & Loss Statement for FY2020
/As part of our commitment to transparency in podcasting, Earlier this year we provided people with a full break down of our Profit and Loss statement, as way of allowing people to see where their money is spent. Money is not a thing that is discussed overly often (except when we ask you to give us yours!), so we have decided that this will be a yearly feature - each year, we’re going to make public our operating costs and income. This is information we have to manage anyway, because as a business, we need to complete tax returns, so ultimately the only additional work here is making sure it’s all understandable to people who don’t know our business.
A few caveats before we go right into it. Firstly, this information covers our costs from July 1st, 2019, to the end of the financial year on June 30th, 2020. This statement does not go into details on who we’ve paid and how much, and just shows information on general categories.
Secondly, because a significant portion of our income is in US Dollars (and much of that is left as USD in our PayPal account), we use split-currency accounting. In effect, anything that doesn’t pass through our AU Dollar accounts stays on the sheet as USD (Our accountant does the relevant work to convert that to AUD for tax purposes).
| Ingoing | AUD | USD |
|---|---|---|
| Merchandise Sales | $97.00 | |
| Patreon | $3,167.71 | |
| Event Sales | $0.00 | |
| Voice Acting Services | $50.00 | |
| Donations | $20.00 | $10.00 |
Passer Vulpes Productions has a number of revenue streams. Our primary revenue stream is our Patreon. We also maintain a merch store (which we’ve recently upgraded and would love you to peruse!), if we run events, there may be ticket sales, this year we’ve begun to put any voice acting work we’ve been paid for into the business, and we also receive occasional donations.
That last one probably needs some additional explanation - we have a PayPal.me address that we don’t advertise, but does get promoted by others every so often. Payments made through this system aren’t for anything, so they’re included separately. In tax terms they’re not actually taxable income for us here, but they’re included as part of our overall income.
| Category | AUD | USD |
|---|---|---|
| Podbean Webhosting | $160.17 | |
| Store Postage | $13.70 | |
| Store Fees | $2.90 | |
| Mobile Phone Recharges | $60.00 | |
| Squarespace Webhosting | $244.14 |
| Category | AUD | USD |
|---|---|---|
| Actors | $105.00 | |
| Transcription costs | $252.99 | |
| Merchandise Manufacturing | $379.00 | |
| Merchandise Packaging | $6.67 | |
| Postage | $46.20 |
Our production cycle for Seabrooke was split between last financial year and this year, and most of these expenses are post-recording expenses, as well as expenses relating to the show launch (this include the merchandise costs and packaging, the venue hire and the postage costs. The Actors costs this year included paying for retakes, and a bump in payment for our least-paid actors, after we made a decision this year about minimum payments for actors.
| Category | AUD | USD |
|---|---|---|
| Actors | $40.00 | |
| Sound Effects & Music | $45.00 | |
| Total | $80.00 |
Move On was a short produced by Erin for the RODE podcast competition, and was a one-day production, so costs were absolutely minimal, with Acting and Sound effects being the only costs.
| Category | AUD | USD |
|---|---|---|
| Pinecast Webhosting | $282.95 | |
| Squarespace Webhosting | $223.21 | |
| Buffer Social Media Service | $203.06 | |
| Total | $709.22 |
Because we’ve started to work on consolidating a number of our production costs, we’ve included a category on services that we pay for that multiple productions use. This includes our Pinecast hosting (which our only current cost for Nym’s Nebulous notions, Passer Vulpes Presents, and Floodlight Viscera), Squarespace hosting for the Passer Vulpes website, and the costs for our social media management service.
| Category | AUD | USD |
|---|---|---|
| Conferences - Tickets | $397.58 | |
| Visual Elements Graphics Service | $142.09 | |
| Bank & Paypal Fees | $36.53 | |
| Sound Tools | $39.00 | |
| Office Supplies and Equipment | $153.41 |
Our final category of expenses are those that aren’t directly connected to production at all. These include any conferences we attend (we attended two this year, both required no travel, so there’s no expenses for travel this year), The graphics service we used previously for our stats graphs (which we’ve now moved on from, and will be using an alternative, free option!), Bank and Paypal Fees and any Office equipment, supplies or Audio/Visual equipment that we’ve purchased for the business, of which we’ve purchased a bit, but not a particularly large amount.
Some items that don’t appear this year - We did not attend Midsumma Carnival this year, due to not being able to get a table, so no costs there. There’s also no awards category, as they did not happen during this financial year. Business registration costs probably should have been here, but I forgot to pay them until after the financial year, so they’ll turn up on next year’s statement instead.
| Category | AUD | USD |
|---|---|---|
| Income | $167.00 | $3,177.71 |
| Love and Luck | -$480.91 | |
| Seabrooke | -$1,056.70 | -$320.09 |
| Move On | -$85.00 | |
| Common Production | -$709.22 |
And here we come to the final accounting. Now, looking solely at the numbers. I’d not be surprised if you couldn’t really tell whether we made a profit or loss, and that’s exactly why I pay an accountant to tell me. When our USD income and expenses are converted over, our total Taxable Income is AUD$4786, and our total Taxable Expenses are AUD$4,800 (this includes some expenses that aren’t on our books but are included in the tax calculation, like home-office costs and the like), which leads to a total of…
A $14.00 loss. Yep, exceptionally close to a profit this year, and significantly better than our previous loss. We are, for all intents and purposes, covering the costs of our productions. Some people may note that we’ve been pretty fallow on our productions this year, and we’re expecting this to change significantly, so unless we see a big increase in our Patreon, this is probably as close as we’ll get to profit for a while. With that said, if you do feel like helping to improve our next financial year’s profit and loss statement, We would love your support on our Patreon, and if a committment like that isn’t your bag, you can also make one-time donations via PayPal as well.
Thankyou for your time, and I hope you’ve gotten something from what we’ve shared today.