Business Accounting: How Three Types of Female Entrepreneurs Deal with Bookkeeping Issues

Posted on December 24, 2009 - Filed Under Go Jane Go, Meet a Jane, Merry Jane, Tenacity Jane, Which Jane Are You?

When the numbers don’t add up, it’s no fun to deal with bookkeeping issues. But while the lack of enthusiasm on the subject for entrepreneurs may be common, diverse small business owners are likely to deal with business accounting issues in different ways.

A new study from Jane Out of the Box, an authority on female entrepreneurs, reveals that there are five distinct types of female business-owners, each with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. This study – involving over 800 female entrepreneurs over two years – shows distinct patterns in the ways that diverse women deal with different issues, including those related to business accounting and bookkeeping.

The second of the two installments on the subject, this article will cover how three of those five types of women entrepreneurs are likely to respond to a bookkeeping crisis: Go Jane Go, Merry Jane and Tenacity Jane.

Go Jane Go is a highly successful female entrepreneur. She loves what she does, and usually takes home the biggest paycheck of any of the five types. However, she’s often doing so at the expense of her personal life, working long hours and struggling to keep up with her professional and personal commitments.

Because Go Jane Go is such a successful entrepreneur, chances are good that she already has systems in place to deal with her business accounting. However, Go Jane Go’s confidence and ability to multi-task also mean that she may tend to take over tasks she has previously delegated – especially when things go wrong. She often will respond to an accounting crisis by trying to figure out the problem herself.

A tip for Go Jane Go: to avoid falling into the trap of doing everything yourself, sit down with your bookkeeper and/or accountant and work out the issues together. This way, you can make sure the books are getting done right while still allowing your team members to do their jobs and to keep yourself from doing it all and becoming overwhelmed.

Our second type of entrepreneur is known as Merry Jane. This entrepreneur tends to be “building a business on the side” – in addition to a day job, or a focus on family and other pursuits. She doesn’t have a high personal income from her business, but she also tends to be working less than 40 hours a week, and she loves the freedom her business affords her.

Because Merry Jane runs a supplemental business, she is the least likely of the five Jane types to be using a bookkeeping service. She may only devote a few hours each day to her business, and so she is the most likely to put off dealing with an accounting crisis entirely. This approach has the potential to endanger the future of her business, if left unchecked.

A strategic course of action for Merry Jane would be to invest in hiring a qualified bookkeeper or accountant, and to get herself trained on a convenient accounting system that works for her schedule. Although implementing that new system may take a few more hours at the outset, in the long run it will help her to make better use of the limited amount of time she has to dedicate to growing her business.

The third type of entrepreneur is Tenacity Jane. A small business owner driven by passion and commitment, Tenacity Jane nevertheless tends to be struggling with cash flow and finances. She tends to be feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or worried, and as a consequence is working longer hours than she wants to, just to get by.

As in almost any type of crisis, Tenacity Jane is likely to be the hardest hit, because she’s already in the most difficult position. If she already has a bookkeeper, she’s likely to consider saving herself the expense by taking over the books herself; if she’s not using a bookkeeper, she’s likely to be reluctant to take on the added expense, even when that is what her business really needs.

If so, the best course of action for Tenacity Jane would be to continue working with a bookkeeper or accountant – or if she’s doing the books herself, to hand it over to a professional, in order to save herself the more substantial expenses, later on. At the same time, Tenacity Jane might benefit by looking at her bookkeeping crisis as an opportunity to take a big-picture look at her income and expenses, and to consider new ways that she might be able to increase her income and lower her operating costs.

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