If you're in the planning and growing stages of developing your green business, you'll know how important it is to keep adequate records. As part of your role in developing your company, you'll delegate or control the ongoing record-keeping process, including financial and tax data related to the business.

There are many financial reports that you'll use on an ongoing basis, both to understand your own cash flow (money coming in versus money going out) and to demonstrate for banking, insurance, and other external purposes.

You'll also be keeping track of customer information such as contact information and notes about projects, vendors/suppliers/distributors, facilities, maintenance agreements, bank routing numbers, and passwords and PINs.

Much of this may be done online using tools like project management software, customer relationship management tools, databases, or online billing tools--- more than a few of our clients use Google Docs, PayPal, a Facebook Fans page, Twitter, Constant Contact, and Quickbooks online and call it a day!

However, you will develop a protocol, if there isn't one already, to maintain a central depository of information, so that authorized parties who want to grab the company's current "snapshot" can access and understand the overall health of the company and where it stands at any given moment.

When you're working "in the business" as much as "on the business", you realize what a tremendous task this can become: for startups, some women are doing it all --- the work, the bookkeeping, the organizing, the record-keeping, the planning, and the big-level visionary thinking. That pace is unsustainable, and if you're in that position or you see it happening at your company, I highly recommend you find partners to assist you in the process. When good people work with each other --- when you have someone like a bookkeeper, accountant, tax advisor, attorney, insurance agent, financial advisor you can trust-- you free yourself and the leadership to focus much more on building the business and making it the best it can be.

We need your ideas on how to encourage more women to take on the challenge of starting and growing a green business. It's 2009 and we have a chance to support each other. Let's work on this process together, make money, fill the world's needs, and create positive social change through our efforts to take care of the planet.

Follow me on Twitter at @monicadear and let me know about your green business!

List your green business for free in the national directory at www.greenbusinesswomen.com.  Follow me on Twitter at @monicadear and let me know about your green business!


Monica S. Flores  of  is committed to educating, empowering, and connecting women in business -- she believes in the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profits. She is available for consulting on web development, green business practices, and women in business.

Photo credit: Jenna Carver