Business Start-up Checklist. This note collects the ordinary tasks that tend to be discovered late, in roughly the order they are usually needed. It is a general list rather than advice about a particular business, and none of it replaces professional guidance where a decision has legal or tax consequences.
Before opening
- Write, in one sentence, what the business sells and to whom.
- Decide the trading name and check it is genuinely available to use.
- Choose the legal structure and register it in the way your jurisdiction requires.
- Open a separate account so business money never mixes with personal money.
- Establish how records will be kept from the first transaction, not the first year end.
- Work out the price, then work out whether that price covers the cost of delivering it.
- Find out which permissions, registrations or insurances your trade requires.
In the first months
- Track cash weekly, separately from profit.
- Write down how an enquiry becomes an order, and follow the same route every time.
- Decide what the business will not do, and keep the list.
- Review prices on a fixed date rather than when money gets tight.