Bookkeeping in Excel as a freelancer: a fine start, with three pitfalls

Can you do your Dutch bookkeeping in Excel? Yes, simply. The tax authority requires verifiable records, not a particular program, and for many starters a spreadsheet is a fine beginning. But three things go wrong in practice, and all three are foreseeable.

Full disclosure first

You are reading this on the website of Finq, an accounting app, so we have an interest in you switching at some point. So let us be plain: Excel is legitimate, free and flexible, and for a handful of invoices a year you need nothing else from us. The pitfalls below are real, but they are there to know about, not to scare you with.

The minimum your sheet should hold

Four tabs are enough: invoices (number, date, client, amount excluding VAT, VAT, paid on), expenses (date, supplier, amount, VAT, where the receipt is), hours (needed for the 1,225-hour criterion) and kilometres if you drive for work. Keep the sheet and the actual invoices and receipts for seven years, PDFs included: a row in a spreadsheet is not an invoice.

Pitfall 1: invoice numbers and the invoice requirements

Dutch rules require sequential invoice numbering without gaps or duplicates, and Excel does not guard that. Copy or sort one row and you have two invoices with the same number, without warning. The other invoice requirements, like your VAT id and the VAT per rate, are also yours to add every single time. Use one fixed number series and a fixed template, not "previous invoice, save as".

Pitfall 2: the VAT return becomes retyping work

Every quarter you file a VAT return: VAT on your revenue minus the VAT on your costs, split by rate. In Excel that means filtering, summing and retyping every quarter, and one wrong cell reference quietly carries into every following return.

Pitfall 3: nothing is connected, so backlog creeps in

The sheet does not know which invoices were paid, which receipt is missing or what happened on your bank account. Everything in it, you typed; everything you forget is silently absent. That is how the classic December evening with a shoebox of receipts happens. Doing Excel means scheduling a fixed weekly moment, as described in setting up your records.

When switching pays off

Stay in Excel while upkeep takes minutes and your returns are right. Switch once you find yourself double-checking invoice numbers, spending an evening on the VAT return, or invoicing more (more clients, reminders, recurring invoices). Then pick a good moment: on a quarter boundary, taking your last invoice number with you. The guide on switching accounting software covers it; the steps from Excel are the same, only simpler.

What Finq does here

Finq takes over exactly the three pitfalls: invoice numbers run on automatically and invoices meet the requirements, the VAT return is pre-filled every quarter (Finq Plus), and you photograph receipts straight into your expenses. Invoicing, quotes, hours and mileage are free and unlimited, so you can start alongside your sheet without cancelling anything. Just need a proper invoice occasionally? The free invoice tool works without an account.