Keeping the track of the money you bring in each day is a challenge—even for businesses that only take payments a few times a month. It can be a total nightmare for businesses that take in payments every day—even moreso for businesses that take in lots of payments each day (ecommerce sites, stores, food carts/restaurants, etc). How do you keep track of it all?

The best course of action is to work with a company that is set up to accept and process a lot of payments in a given day. Sometimes this is your bank but if you want to make sure that you get the best rates, you might think about choosing an independent company. For example, a company like eMerchant.com offers better rates than a lot of other online payment processors and is set up to work with pretty much any bank that you might choose to hold your accounts. Another benefit is that they aren’t limited to web based businesses. They work with traditional POS style businesses as well, which is an assett if you ever want to take your business off of the web and into the brick and mortar world.

Some businesses, though, simply don’t need such a robust system. For example, a craft kiosk probably doesn’t need the extensive merchant systems offered by most banks and commerce companies. A couple of years ago, these businesses were limited to doing sales almost extensively in cash (some might accept checks). Today, thanks to the mobile card readers offered through PayPal and Square—you can take credit and debit card payments just as easily as a cash payment. Some will even let you set up your account with your inventory so that you can track exactly what you’re selling as well as how the money you’re bringing in for those sales.

If you work primarily from home and by yourself, you always have the option of doing everything by hand. This does, unfortunately, leave a ton of room for error. If you aren’t going to be taking in any cash payments, though, keeping track of your online payments through Excel and, for example, PayPal, is often the simplest and cheapest thing that you can do. Make sure you have an accountant double check your bookkeeping at tax time though!

These are just some of the options that are available when you need to manage and track a large number of sales and money. However robust a system you might need, with a little bit of research you’ll turn up plenty of perfect options for you and your business.