Keep good records of your Art!

Can you remember the name and details of every piece of art you've ever painted, every client who's ever bought work from you, every piece you've donated, every competition you've entered and gallery you've left work with? Is all this information in your head or written down somewhere?

If it's in your head, you'd better pray nothing happens to you! Keeping written records is important for so many good business reasons but in a worse case scenario, something happens to you, it could make life easier for someone else to sort things out. "How" you keep those records not as important as "Why" you keep them. The 'how' can be as simple or as complicated as you want.

If you haven't yet jumped completely into the digital age, then it could be a box of 7" x 5" index cards. With all the systems available digitally though it just makes sense to use one of them. It could be a simple Excel Spreadsheet, a custom designed software package or something in between like Evernote? Experiment until you find what works for you.

Why should you keep records?

• Keep a history of your work in chronological order for posterity
• Keep track of original sales
• Keep a record of your clients - who bought what
• Keep a record of reproductions sales and edition numbers
• Keep track of which gallery has your work and what they've sold for you
• Keep track of work entered in exhibitions and art fairs
• Keep your insurance company happy with an organised list of your work.
• Whatever other reason you can think of that's important to you.

If you've been painting for a while, and you're not the organised type, you would know that it's pretty easy to lose track of pieces. You send something off to a gallery and forget about it until one day someone tells you that gallery closed down and you suddenly think "didn't I have something with them?" but you can't remember what.

Every business needs systems - systems make life easier. Yes I know you creative types don't have time for the logical and tedious work required to set up a system and maintain it but to operate a successful art business, you MUST!

So, what system will work for you. There are all sorts of software packages out there now designed for keeping records of art - I've listed a few below.

http://www.artscope.net/eArtist/

http://www.arawak.com.au

http://www.evernote.com

The first two on the list are all paid software systems and they offer free trials so if you aren't using anything now, download them and give them a go. OK, these are all designed by Americans but can be used by Aussies as well.

As you know, I'm not an artist but I use Evernote to keep a lot of my records - in fact if you are a client of Art House Reproductions, I have notes about you in my "Clients"  folder. The thing I like about Evernote is that I have access to my information anywhere, anytime. From what I can tell, the other three only work on the computer on which they are installed, that is, no mobile version.

Evernote won't do all that these packages above can do, as easily as these will but it all comes down to what you need. For example, Evernote will allow you to keep photos you take through various stages of the painting in the one note. I think Flick is the only one of the other three that allows that.

The most important thing you need though is to have some sort of record of your work. Do something about it now!