Twelve states of makers' markets, one clean close

Tallow & Co pours candles and cuts soap in a workshop in Asheville, and sells a third of what it makes at weekend markets across twelve states. A market team of six drives a van to two or three of them a month: Charleston, Nashville, Chattanooga, Austin in the spring.

The shoebox

Hattie Szabo, Tallow's controller, describes the old way simply. "Every Monday, a shoebox." Booth fees, gas, motels, a hardware store run for a broken table leg, and lunch. Some of it on the company card, some on personal cards, some in cash. Hattie spent two days at the end of every month matching paper to statements, and the books for any given market were never right before the next one.

Receipts at the stall

Each market weekend is now a trip in Pioneer, with its own card and its own budget. The team photographs a receipt when they get it, at the stall or the pump. Pioneer reads it, matches it to the card charge, and codes it to the market it belongs to.

• Gas and tolls go to the van's cost center, not to the market.
• Booth fees are matched to the invoice the market emailed weeks earlier.
• Per diems run at each city's rate, so a weekend in Austin and one in Chattanooga are both fair.

The odd cash purchase is a photo and a note. Pioneer flags anything it cannot match within a day, which in practice means a receipt that was lost, and Hattie writes those off with a reason attached.

What a market really costs

Because every weekend is its own trip, Tallow now knows what each market costs to attend. The average day on the road comes to $79 a person including the per diem, and two markets that looked busy turned out to cost more than they sold. They are off next year's calendar.

The close used to take two days. Last month it took twenty minutes, and I spent most of it reading which markets earned their weekend.

Two hundred and twelve receipts a month are matched without anyone typing them in. The shoebox is now where the van keeps its spare fuses.