LISA’S STORY
As the CEO of Jam Jar Sisters, and Director of Marketing and Customer Services for Jam Jar’s
parent company, Liquid Accounts Ltd I’m planning to have a blog on the Jam Jar Sisters site,
called Diary of a Businessmum, where I will share the highs and lows, frustrations and successes
of running my own business which I hope will spark discussions and comments within the Jam Jars
community. So here’s the start of my story to get the ball rolling......
Jam Jar Sisters has been born out of my experiences of being self-employed and then setting
up Liquid Accounts, an online accounting software company, and is built around our accounting
and business tools. As a non-accountant, with very little knowledge of, or experience of
accounting this has been an up-hill struggle! However, what this has taught me is that there
are lots of other people out there having the same experiences, and that we’re crying out for
someone to make accounting easier and more accessible for ordinary business people like you and
me! This also means that once the magic and mystique surrounding accounting has been stripped
away we can change the emphasis of what we’re doing and realise is that we’re keeping on top of
the figures for us and our businesses, not just to keep the Inland Revenue happy!
So how did I get to this point?
Before Liquid Accounts was born 3 years ago, I was a self-employed TV
Producer/Director, working initially for the BBC and then for independent production companies
all around the UK. I worked as a contractor, on short-term contracts and became officially
self-employed in 1999. The first thing I did was to find an accountant, as I didn’t have the
first clue about where to start with my accounts. I’m actually very good at maths and have 3
maths qualifications, however I was scared because I didn’t know what information I needed to
keep, how I needed to keep it, when I needed to do a tax return, and what to put in it. I had
no experience of any of this whatsoever – so I went to see an accountant who had been
recommended to me and I told him all of this and said, ‘treat me like I’m stupid and start at
the beginning, so that I can learn and understand what I need to do’. What happened?
Absolutely nothing! A year or so down the line when I did need to complete a tax return, he got
in touch with me and said ‘I need all your accounting information!’ and I said, ‘What
information? You haven’t told me what you need, so I haven’t got anything!’ And I’m sure many
of you have had similar experiences!
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