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

Posted on December 17, 2009 - Filed Under Accidental Jane, Jane Dough, Success Tips for Jane, Which Jane Are You?

Nothing is more frustrating than when the numbers don’t add up in a business. It can create havoc on a day-to-day basis and additional headaches at tax-time. But while almost no one enjoys having an accounting crisis on their hands, diverse entrepreneurs are likely to respond to that crisis in different ways – and all entrepreneurs can learn how to make it work in their favor.

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

In this first installment on the subject from Jane Out of the Box, this article will cover how two of those five types are likely to respond to a bookkeeping crisis: Jane Dough and Accidental Jane.

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Jane Dough is an entrepreneur who enjoys running her business and is comfortable and determined in marketing and selling. She tends to be working longer hours, but she doesn’t mind because her focus is on growth. (Jane Dough is five times as likely to hit the million-dollar revenue mark with her company as other Jane types.) She’s clear in her priorities and may be intentionally and actively growing an asset-based or legacy business.

Because Jane Dough’s focus is on growth, she’s interested in systems that will help to create leverage in her business. Therefore, it’s likely that she’s currently using a bookkeeping service, rather than handling the accounting herself. However, because her focus tends to be on the big picture and strategies for achieving quick growth, Jane Dough may have been moving too quickly when she set up the initial accounting systems with her bookkeeper.

If so, a bookkeeping crisis may pose an important opportunity for Jane Dough to “slow down” long enough to spend some time with her bookkeeper and fine-tune her systems – a proactive approach that will allow her to keep growing her business and strengthening her bottom line.

Our second type of entrepreneur is known as Accidental Jane. Accidental Jane is a successful, confident business owner who never really intended to start a business. She may have decided to “hang out a shingle” simply because she was dissatisfied with previous employment, or because a part-time interest that grew into a full-time business. Accidental Jane doesn’t have big plans to aggressively grow her business, but she’s making good money and she enjoys the work as it comes along.

Because Accidental Janes tend to start a business simply as a way of creating an “ideal job,” female entrepreneurs who fit this type may be reluctant to take the time away from their billable hours to deal with an accounting crisis. If they are currently keeping the books themselves, this reluctance to focus on the nuts and bolts of being an entrepreneur may actually have contributed to Accidental Jane’s accounting crisis in the first place.

A stronger approach in this case would be for Accidental Jane to set aside a few hours to focus on the big picture with her business by working with a qualified professional – not only to help resolve the book-keeping crisis at hand, but to create an accounting system that works for her, which will allow her to spend more time focusing on the “job” she loves, not the books.

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