The first year is not harder than the ones after it. It is just the only year where nothing is a repeat, so everything takes longer than it will again.
Months one to three: get paid once, properly
Register, open a separate account, send one invoice and watch what happens to it. That single loop teaches you more about your own cash flow than any amount of planning, and it tells you how long your clients really take.
Month seven or thereabouts
This is where most people find they have been paying themselves out of money that was never theirs. If the tax pot has been running since month one, this month is unremarkable. If it has not, this is the month it becomes a problem.
Month twelve: read the whole year at once
Total income, total costs, and how much of the income came from your largest client. That last figure is the one worth acting on — anything above half is a business with a single point of failure.
Leave a Reply