[Alexx]

A few thoughts having gone through a similar journey from 0 to several million in revenue.

- The main thing when you are small to focus on is accurate high quality bookkeeping, rather than broader accounting. Almost all of the points you listed above are generally considered bookkeeping concerns (which ledgers to use, debits, credits, etc). So in terms of material to read and learn, bookkeeping is your starting point.

- Most small business accounting software will take care of more than half of the points above automatically - Xero, Quickbooks etc, just pick one and use it - but it is always useful to somewhat understand the underlying principles.

- The only accounting principles you really need to know are having a decent understanding of the balance sheet, P&L and cash flow statement - which are all interlinked. It is wise to be be able to understand each line item on them and to know how changing a figure in one would change figures in the other two and be able to do that even with just pen and paper. This is just useful as a business owner, and is quite a large topic which requires some study and practice.

- Actual statutory accounting I would entirely leave to a 3rd party as it's mostly just for tax and GAAP filing purposes. From day one I just hired a small external accountant and at year end gave them access to our books and let them prepare our filed accounts, I also paid them to file the quarterly tax returns even though our accounting software prepared the statements. That was a good choice as after we'd grown eventually I ended up having the accounts audited by PWC and it meant I could just point them at our accountant and leave them to it. It also means you won't make any silly filing mistakes.

- Set calendar reminders and do your bookkeeping, payroll etc every single month like clockwork, for years I just did it on the 28th of every month, and only later once we were large enough to hire an actual bookkeeper did we start doing it weekly.

- Lastly, once you're under way the things to keep your eye on as a small business is: your cash flow, your working capital requirement (keep it as low as you reasonably can) and your debtor and creditor days (which is part of your working capital requirement). Those are the things most likely to cause you issues.

Also, don't worry too much about it, it's a learning curve - as long as you improve your skills and tools in line with revenue it will be fine.

[gavinhoward]

Thank you for this.

A lot of what you said lines up nicely with what the other commenter said.

I'll start practicing what you suggested. I do weekly bookkeeping for my family's finances, and I wrote a script to check it for inconsistencies. However, I'll also use it as a way to learn more deeply about the balance sheet, P&L, Cash Flow, and their links.

Thank you.