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How Do The Five Janes Handle Bookkeeping Challenges? – Part 2
Posted on June 25, 2009 - Filed Under Success Tips for Jane, Which Jane Are You?
No one enjoys dealing with bookkeeping issues when the numbers don’t add up. But while the lack of enthusiasm on the subject for entrepreneurs may be universal, different small business owners are likely to deal with business accounting issues in different ways.
Let’s look at how 3 of those 5 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 woman entrepreneur. She loves what she does, and tends to be taking 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 as she tries to keep up with all of her many 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 also has a tendency to take over tasks she has previously delegated – especially when things go wrong. Which means that this type of entrepreneur may to respond to an accounting crisis by trying to figure out the problem herself, rather than requiring someone on her team to figure it out. To compound things, because she’s so busy, she may let the problem “sit” until she has time to address it – and create needless extra stress for herself as she worries about when she’ll get to it.
A more strategic response for Go Jane Go would be to sit down with her bookkeeper and/or accountant and work out the issues together. This will keep her from falling into the trap of doing everything herself, and working even longer hours.
Our second type of entrepreneur is Merry Jane. This entrepreneur tends to be building a business [often part-time] as a “labor of love” – in addition to a day-job, or a focus on family or other pursuits. She may not have a high personal income from her business, but she loves both her business and the freedom it affords her.
Merry Jane is the least likely of the five Jane types to be using a bookkeeping service. She’s also the one who is most likely working the fewest hours. Because of that, a strategic course of action for Merry Jane would be to invest in hiring a qualified bookkeeper or accountant or get herself trained on an accounting system that works for her business and 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 focused time she has to dedicate to growing her business. And it will create a step-by-step system – something this Jane loves because it keeps things simple and streamlined.
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 in an effort to get the company on the right track.
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 – and if she’s not using a bookkeeper, she’s likely to be reluctant to take on the added expense, even though it may be 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. Although it may feel like a pinch in the moment, taking this step will free Tenacity Jane to work on bigger things in her business – activities that will drive revenue to be able to pay for the expert help. 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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