Tax professional women carve their own path to business success

Remote working and the technology that enables it has empowered women to set up successful businesses in the tax industry but International Women’s Day barely registers on their radar – at least among the handful who spoke to Accountants Daily.

Vanessa Bamford, director of Vision Beyond Advisory in North Adelaide, said women tended to be more empathetic than men but that had not held her back.

“I've always charged my own way and never taken that approach that it's a man's world. I just think it's a world,” she said.

Before going out on her own she spent seven years working for other firms, and hated it.

“I felt the industry had a theme of overwork, burnout, there was no balance. It was very, very money over impact driven. And production line.

“I started my business in 2010 and I set it up similarly to what I suppose I was used to do, but I never felt that the model worked for me.”

In 2019, she restructured to an outsourced finance business offering virtual CFO and advisory services, and selects her clients from “purpose-driven businesses, not-for-profits and entrepreneurs trying to make impact”.

“We're accountants, we’re advisers. We're about profitability at the end of the day,” she said. “But profitability for me translates into sustainability. It translates into impact and our purpose is to transform the collective wellbeing.

“So we work with other businesses that have a greater purpose. I think that's really important.”

“I feel like that's the change that we need. We need to have this more heart-led, impact-driven change in our industry – in every industry.

“There's a lot of men in business, entrepreneurs, that are very heart-led, but I there's been a culture of them being a lot more hardened, showing that vulnerable side has been challenging.

“I don't think it's about having a female-led future. I think it's having a heart-led future.”

Frustration with traditional work practices was a motivation for many of the women who spoke to Accountants Daily, but technology that made remote work possible was the key game-changer.

Cassandra Scott set up Laurus Bookkeeping in Brisbane in 2005 and said technology had empowered women to establish similar businesses, with bookkeeping especially suitable to remote working.

“It's a pathway where people believe they've got a lot of flexibility in the way they can deliver their work,” she said. “That's opened up opportunities for women particularly in remote and regional areas. Somebody in Far North Queensland could be servicing clients in metropolitan Perth. That's the changing face of our industry.”

Their success had overturned traditional notions that women working from home were earning “pin money” through “cooking jam, a bit of sewing or making pretty jewellery” and the substantial value in their businesses became visible when they come up for sale or merged with accounting practices.

She cited one small, remote bookkeeping business that sold for a seven-figure sum and said many accountants were starting to recognise the benefits of collaborating or merging with bookkeepers.

“When we collaborate together successfully, we provide incredible value to our clients,” she said.

Tamara-Lee Beveridge, owner of Bizcore 360 bookkeeping and BAS services in Launceston, is one took up the opportunities offered by technology and ran with them.

Ms Beveridge spent more than two decades working as bookkeeper in corporate and small business before finally walking out one day in frustration.

“I didn't even know you could make a living out of having a bookkeeping practice,” she said, but urged on by friends she joined the Australian Bookkeepers Network and within three months had her BAS licence.

“One of the things that made it so much easier to jump in was the fact that Xero provided their partners with free education. So you could use the time until you're building up those clients to educate yourself in different areas.”

Gender balance in bookkeeping isn’t captured by the professional bodies but Ms Beveridge reckoned it was about three-quarters female, and women were a good fit. They were good problem solvers and care-givers, she said, who put themselves out to help businesses struggling through the pandemic. And women faced challenges every day, so once-a-year events like International Women’s Day were not on her radar.

Sarah Lawrance, who set up Hot Toast in Sydney in 2015, came from the male-dominated TV and advertising industries and felt men could learn from the life-first business model adopted by women in the tax profession.

Ms Lawrance said Hot Toast, which offers bookkeeping and accounting services to the creative sector, relied on a remote working model from the outset.

“I’ve got a distributed team before it was sexy to be!” she said. “We've got nearly 10 women now up the east coast of Australia and in different parts of regional Australia as well.”

Ms Lawrance said it helped the business to tap into talent that might otherwise be overlooked, and offered women with young families the balance and flexibility they needed.

“We have women who work part time, full time, start early, start late, have hours off during the day … we're pretty relaxed around how people work, as long as the job gets done.”

The technology was crucial to making it work but also brought her an ability to scale and find a talent pool that would otherwise be unavailable.

“I would never have been able to find these women in the four postcodes around me in Sydney. There's women that are ex-Big 4, ex-general manager … there's no way that we would have been able to tap those women on the shoulder and say, Hey, come work with us if we were working in the CBD of a Sydney. I've just been able to offer that and give them their independence and their autonomy in that space.”

“I would like to see more male-dominated firms look at this model and go, Okay, we'll potentially have a look at pushing into that as well.”

Chief customer officer at Xero Rachael Powell agreed that it was time to jettison some of the old thinking around gender.

“The sooner we break with old traditions and perceptions around the roles and responsibilities of men and women, the sooner we can unlock the full potential of everyone,” she said.