Record-Keeping for Artists
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Beth E Peterson
Text and Artwork:
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 How, you may ask, can I hold two such disparate views and still maintain that both are true? Ah! Simply because there are two very different reasons to keep records in the first place. The first type of records are the yucky ones: legal records. The second type are the exciting ones: personal records. Legal Record-keeping: All of us, whether showing or selling our work or not, should at a minimum keep a journal of expenses, including the receipts. These records will be necessary if you ever have to make an insurance claim.If you are selling your work, you will also need your journal of expenses come tax time. The IRS requires that all tax deductions be backed up with complete records. In addition, you will need to keep a sales journal. If you make more than a certain amount a year, $400 last time I checked, from the sale of your work or through prize money, the IRS will tax that income. Also be aware that if you make direct sales you will be required to collect sales tax for your state and report it to your state's revenue service. Remember, the main reason for keeping these legal records is to protect you and your rights in the event there is ever a dispute between yourself and some other party. If you have no record, you may very well have no proof whatsoever. Personal Record-keeping: These are the records that you keep mainly for yourself. Although they may be of some use in a legal fray, their actual function is to provide you with concise information about your work.
If you show your work at exhibitions or galleries, you will want to keep an exhibition journal, recording which piece(s) was accepted or rejected ("A" and "R" in the sample log above), when each piece was shipped, the date you received it back, what money you received if it was sold, and any prizes it may have won. In addition, it is helpful to keep more detailed records of who the shipping carrier or agent was and who the contact person for the show was in case any problems should arise. If you are more serious about showing, a large, open-spaced calendar also helps keep track of upcoming exhibition deadlines and other important information.
I also recommend keeping a journal or logbook listing your work by date completed, title, medium and size. In addition, you may want to take slides of each completed piece and keep them in a three-ring binder, possibly organized by year. (Slides almost always give a sharper reproduction than a photograph, and they are not as vulnerable as digital records such as .jpg's or .tiff's.) If you're prolific, it can help if you keep a separate index card file listing each work by title and giving its location in your slide binder. Both the production log and the slides can be useful in the case of theft or fire. It is also beneficial, and downright interesting, to see how one's work changes and progresses over time. 
I have seven scrapbooks all together: these are divided into multiple sections. For example, one scrapbook holds nothing but images of
predatory mammals divided by family: canid, feline, ursines, etc. Yet another scrapbook
holds images of people, man-made objects, and images of the cosmos. And so on.
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