Lark Paper

Guides

Complete answers to the questions that send people looking for a spreadsheet in the first place.

Nobody goes looking for a template because they want a template. They go looking because there is a question underneath it — what should I charge?, how much of this invoice is actually mine?, what do I even need to write down? — and a spreadsheet looked like the shortest route to an answer.

These guides are the answer, written out in full. Each one is meant to leave you able to do the thing yourself, with a pen and a blank sheet if that is what you have. Where a Lark Paper template does the same job faster, it gets exactly one mention at the bottom of the page, and you can ignore it.

Some things you will not find here: invented statistics, “in today’s fast-paced world”, or a number quoted without saying where it came from and when. Tax figures carry the year they apply to, because they change. Where something is a rule of thumb rather than a rule, it says so.

Developer tools

Freelancing

  • How Much Should I Charge as a Freelancer?

    A worked method for setting a freelance rate: gross up from target take-home pay, add real overhead, divide by honestly billable hours. Includes the arithmetic, a utilization sensitivity table, and where the number stops being useful.

    7 min read

  • Freelance Quarterly Taxes: How Much to Set Aside

    A US freelancer's guide to estimated quarterly taxes: the verified 2026 self-employment tax math, the 2026 payment dates, the 100%/110% safe harbor rule, and a set-aside percentage you can run on every invoice.

    8 min read

Reading

  • How Many Pages a Week Should a Book Club Read?

    How to set a book club reading pace people actually keep: the pages-per-hour arithmetic from published reading-rate research, a 90-minutes-a-week budget, what to do when a book is too long for the gap, and how to build the year's calendar backwards from meeting dates.

    7 min read

Small business

  • Small Business Bookkeeping: What to Track and What to Ignore

    What a small business actually needs to record — the eight columns that answer every question your books have to answer — and the accounting work you can honestly skip until you are much bigger.

    7 min read

  • Excel vs Google Sheets for Small Business Finances

    A specific comparison for keeping a small business's books: real cost, hard limits, collaboration, offline access, and the .xlsx round-trip behaviour that silently unlocks protected cells.

    7 min read

  • Can a Cleaning Business Deduct Mileage Between Jobs?

    Which miles a house cleaning or janitorial business can actually deduct: the commuting rule, the three IRS exceptions to it, the two different 2026 mileage rates, and the four things a log has to record to survive an audit.

    8 min read

Weddings

  • How Much Does a Wedding Cost? Building a Budget That Holds

    What a US wedding actually costs, using The Knot's 2026 Real Weddings Study: why the $34,000 average is a poor planning figure, why you must not add up the category averages, and how to build a budget backwards from the money you actually have.

    7 min read

Writing

  • How to Outline a Novel Without Killing the Fun

    A practical method for outlining a novel that keeps discovery intact: a logline stress test, four load-bearing beats with word-count targets, want-vs-need character work, and scene cards you fill in one drafting session ahead.

    7 min read