covering your business’s Market, Operations, Systems, and Scaling for future growth
The M.O.S.S. System
THE ROOT WORK
Building a Business That Can Sustain Growth
Love Your Ecosystem
This workbook will be your hub for all things related to the admin side of your services, operations, and business growth trends. The sheets in this workbook track your leads, project portfolio, sales funnel success rates, feast-or-famine cycle, project scheduling, service rates, revenue goals, and quote calculations. The only thing this spreadsheet does NOT do is bookkeeping—at least not yet. Instead, this workbook is designed to help you better understand what markets your business excels in and which services are the most helpful within these markets. By better understanding who you serve and what you do best, you’ll be able to make intentional, calculated growth decisions for your business in the months and years to come. Ready to launch a course, start a blog, or offer a new service? This spreadsheet will help you determine where to start. Feel overbooked or underworked? This spreadsheet will help you forecast and make better scheduling decisions. Not earning the hourly livable wage you need and deserve? This sheet helps you pinpoint where you’re going wrong and how to charge what you need.
WHY “MOSS”?
Mosses function like sponges, soaking up rainfall and ground moisture to keep their environments healthy and properly humid so the ecosystem around them can thrive. Without moss, many environments would wither and die. This workbook is like your business’s moss ground cover, soaking up data on your Market impact, Operations structure, Service menu, and Scalability to provide your business with a healthy foundation saturated in data that encourages growth and attracts like-minded ecosystems (clients and colleagues) to your space.
The goal of this sheet is to provide an incredible amount of high-value data for your business with a low time commitment. Quick entries, simple questions—powerful analytics.
Seconds of Data Input, Hours of Growth-Fueling Data
The MOSS System was built to give you high-impact business insights without burying you in hours of spreadsheet maintenance. Most sheets take less than a minute to update—often as little as 20–30 seconds of data entry—but that small input automatically feeds dashboards, graphs, and analytics throughout the workbook. Log a lead inquiry, and instantly start tracking conversion trends, market strengths, feast-or-famine cycles, service demand, and portfolio growth patterns. Instead of manually hunting for patterns in scattered notes and invoices, the MOSS System helps you turn everyday admin tasks into long-term business strategy.
Click to scroll through a few sample visuals of the system. Note that not all sheets are pictured, nor do the screenshots show the sheet’s entirety.
LOOK INSIDE
A Detailed Look at the Workbook
What’s Included in the MOSS System
There are 12 tools included in the workbook, organized into the four components of the M.O.S.S. System:
Understand and master your market through these data analysis sheets:
1. “Inquiries and Clients.” This spreadsheet acts as the central hub for collecting and organizing your lead, client, project, and portfolio data so it can power dynamic sales and business analytics across the rest of the workbook.
2. “Sales Analysis.” Turn your raw lead and client data from your “Inquiries and Clients” page into a living snapshot of your business—built-in analytics that reveal conversion trends, popular services, seasonal sales patterns, and the markets your business serves best. Comes with a sidebar of self-reflective questions to encourage strategic, personalized business growth when examining your data.
3. “Portfolio Analysis.” Understand your client base’s demographics, markets, and publishing routes.
Confidently manage your project operations without overbooking with these tools:
4. “Scheduling.” For quick project capacity and schedule forecasting, sometimes a simple table is better than a fancy subscription. Works for independent editors and teams.
5. “Workflow Template.” Use this template to build out your workflow for a service to standardize your processes. This sheet also converts beautifully into a Dubsado workflow! Bonus sheet: an example workflow to study and model.
6. “Package Timeline Calculator.” Instantly determine the start and end dates for multi-service packages! This calculator asks for the start date, your projected editing speed per service, and manuscript word count. The formulas do the rest! The timeline includes periods for author review between services and accounts for a healthy work-life balance, skipping over weekends and building in a 10% “life happens” buffer for editing turnaround.
Quickly calculate and track service invoices for projects.
7. “Rate Sheet and Quote Calculator.” Your service rates, project deposits, and editor vs. business payouts, all in a beautiful table. No more “hang on, let me do some math” on sales calls. Just pop in the word count, and you’ll have an instant projection of the author’s invoice, your personal income, and how much you’ll need to set aside for overhead and taxes. Includes both a la carte services and editorial packages. Works for both solo projects and subcontracted projects.
8. “Invoicing: Solo & Team.” Two sheets to track invoices: one with team-related expenses, the other for sole proprietor income. If you do a mixture of personal income projects and subcontracted projects, no fear—we have an easy system for it, and it doesn’t require an expensive online subscription.
9. “YTD Accounting Overhead.” See your year-to-date (YTD) revenue, income, and expenses related to both invoices and miscellaneous overhead. Data pulled from the Invoicing sheet for revenue and income tracking.
These calculators help you design a plan to scale your business with metrics that matter.
10. “New Rate Calculator.” Have a project with a strange scope, or do you want to offer a new service but aren’t sure how to project what kind of rate to charge? Use your sample edit data to determine a fair rate for all parties.
11. “Monthly Revenue Goals.” Walk backward from your desired monthly revenue to the rates and speeds you deliver, and this table will show you how much you actually need to edit per month to hit your goals.
12. “Tweaking and Tracking Services.” Feel like your service scope is off from your rates? Record your editing and admin time in this spreadsheet to get an average breakdown of earnings. Maybe it’ll inspire a rate change.
Purchase Deliverables
The MOSS System is built in Google Sheets to ensure every editor can access their system’s workbook regardless of their computer applications. The Google Sheet workbook is compatible with Excel, Numbers, and mobile devices. If you would like your workbook sent to you in a different CSV format right off the bat, just let us know!
Pricing
| STANDARD | $147 | The complete MOSS System with three onboarding videos for easy set-up. |
| PRO | $197 | Everything above + deep dive videos on the power of analytics, custom quoting scenarios, and advanced forecasting set-up. |
| BESPOKE | $297 | Everything above + a full-service build by Amber herself for your business’s MOSS System. |
**Looking for additional customization? Contact us for a custom quote. Please note that redesigning or modifying the workbook beyond its intended use (including changes to formulas, automations, or backend sheet structures) may affect functionality, and Rooted in Writing cannot guarantee the performance of altered files.
ORDER YOUR WORKBOOK
Let’s Grow Your Ecosystem
Fill out the following form with your name, email address, and the tier of MOSS you are interested in purchasing. Amber will get back to you in 2-3 business days to deliver your own personal MOSS System!
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