Accounting for a New LLC: First 90 Days Operational Plan

The first few months of a start-up private limited company determine whether financial management will later become a strength or constant firefighting. Most mistakes are not made out of malice, but because the entrepreneur focuses on sales and product and postpones the accounting structure. If the basic processes are built correctly right away, the cost of later changes will be significantly reduced.

The goal of the first 90 days is not a perfect system, but a working framework: clear document rules, a calendar of deadlines, accountability in the model and at least one reliable management report per month. This empowers the board to make decisions based on data, not guesswork. The following plan helps break down a big task into small steps that can actually be implemented.

In practice, before filing, verify the requirements in EMTA explains VAT obligations and EMTA employment register guidance.

Before going into the details, look at the big picture: process, responsibility, control and management view must move at the same pace. If one of them falls behind, the problem usually shifts to the next month, rather than disappearing.

If you need an early budgeting baseline, compare scope and costs in this accounting services pricing guide for OÜ.

Days 1-30: Foundation and Document Discipline

On this topic, it is worth starting with the simplest principle. At the very beginning, it is necessary to decide which document is the official cost document in the company and who approves it. Accounts Payable, Sales Invoices and Expenses must flow into the same data stream to avoid manual matching later. Separate business and personal expenses from day one, as confusion on this point usually leads to the most improvement. If this agreement is in writing and visible to the whole team, last-minute improvisation is usually reduced.

The next important layer is control, not just implementation. Create a file naming and archiving policy that the entire team follows, even if the team is still very small. A minimum monthly closing routine must be established: who collects the documents, who checks the missing lines, who confirms the final result. The win for the first month is that no expense goes undocumented and the board has visibility into cash flow. If this discipline is maintained, both the accuracy of the deadlines and management's confidence in the report will usually improve.

The first-month target is simple: no undocumented expenses. If your team uses e-invoices, apply the minimum data rules from this Estonia e-invoice implementation guide immediately.

Days 31-60: Workflows, deadlines and responsibilities

In practice, a clear sequence of the process gives the greatest victory. In the second month, the company must fix a calendar where the tax and reporting deadlines can be seen separately. If multiple people are approving invoices, the approval cycle needs to be standardized so that decisions don't get stuck in conversations. Payroll processes must be linked to a single timeline so that bonuses and absences are accounted for on time. It is important for management that this step is measurable, because only then can a systemic problem be distinguished from a single exception.

The other side of the picture is how to prevent deviations. It is important to appoint a replacement because in a young company the absence of one person is a risk with high impact. At the end of each month, it is worth having a short quality meeting, where repeated errors are reviewed and a correction is decided. In this stage, the company changes from reactive to proactive management. The most important thing is that the decisions are not lost in the conversations, but can be restored several months later.

By the end of month two, deadlines must be tied to a visible calendar. The EMTA deadlines calendar 2026 is a practical baseline for that schedule.

Days 61-90: A management perspective and a system ready for growth

Companies often underestimate the impact of this step. By the third month, the board must receive at least one monthly report that links turnover, expenses and cash flow into one picture. If the business model includes project or product areas, costs must be labeled so that profitability can be assessed separately. The company should decide which activities remain in-house and which are delegated to a service partner. Practical benefits usually emerge within the first two cycles when accountability and data quality move in sync.

If the growth comes quickly, this is the point that becomes the most sensitive. The system must withstand growth: new employees, higher transaction volume and more complex contracts must not break the process. Critical controls must be documented so that audit readiness is not created overnight at the end of the year. After 90 days, the goal is to have financial data supporting decisions at least as fast as sales are growing. In this way, the process becomes scalable: the volume of transactions may increase, but the quality of work does not decrease.

Month three is where you define what stays automated and what requires expert control. This boundary is explained clearly in Accounting software vs accountant in 2026.

When to involve a service partner and when to keep the function in-house

Once this part is in place, the whole cycle becomes much more stable. If the entrepreneur does not have the time to manage the process on a daily basis, using a service partner is often a safer option. The in-house model works well when the company has strong financial management competence and substitution capacity. At the heart of the decision must be risk tolerance: how expensive would one false declaration or breach of deadlines be. The point of this block is not to add red tape, but to reduce expensive rework at the end of the period.

The final result depends on whether the decisions are recorded in writing. In the case of a service partner, the key issue is the clarity of the scope of work, not just the amount of the monthly fee. The combined model is common in young companies: strategic management in-house, standard process as a service. It is important to choose a solution that does not eat up the founder's time, but frees it up for sales and product development. As a result, the team can spend less energy on fires and more on value-creating decisions.

The outsourcing decision is never about price alone. Before committing, align responsibilities with this in-house vs outsourced accounting risk model.

90 Day Startup Checklist

• Create a written policy for document collection and approval.
• Establish a tax and reporting calendar with those responsible.
• Formulate a process for payroll inputs.
• Designate at least one replacement for critical tasks.
• Build a monthly management report with three key indicators.
• Check that all bank transactions are correctly linked to the documents.
• Organize accesses and roles in systems.
• Agree when the model will be reassessed in terms of growth.

The value of the checklist occurs in the iteration. If the same list is traversed in each cycle, deviations become visible sooner and corrections are cheaper than last-minute redoing.

Risk matrix of a young private company

The sooner risks are mapped by name, the cheaper their impact. Late corrections are almost always more expensive than early discipline.

Use the matrix practically: choose one to two high-impact risks at the beginning of each period and complete their correction before opening the next focus. This is how permanent quality growth occurs.

Mini-Case: Starting a Service Business

The founding team launched a new service business and the first two months of focus was entirely on the sales pipeline. Bills and expenses accumulated in different channels and the month closing was constantly shifting. At the beginning of the third month, the board did not have a clear picture of which client or project is really profitable. The problem was not the number of transactions, but the lack of process.

After implementing the 90-day plan, documentation was brought into a single flow, a due date calendar was established, and a simple monthly report was created. Already in the fourth month, it was possible to make a pricing decision based on real data, and the cash flow became more predictable. The biggest benefit was that the founders no longer had to "save the books" at the end of each month.

Weekly plan for the first 90 days

The following rhythm helps keep the pace without over-optimizing: the goal is a working system, not perfect documentation on the first try.

1. Week 1-2: Flow of documents and payments into one system.
2. Week 3-4: deadline calendar and confirmation of responsibilities.
3. Week 5-6: Standardization of payroll process inputs.
4. Week 7-8: Use the month-end checklist.
5. Week 9-10: First management report and KPI review.
6. Week 11-12: Correcting the model according to the growth plan.

Once this cycle has been completed, the company has a foundation that can be safely built upon during growth.

If the execution of the plan is monitored on a weekly basis through a responsible owner, the risk of activities remaining on the "to do later" list is greatly reduced. A consistent pace is more important here than a single sprint.

For deeper execution detail, continue with the E-invoice implementation guide in Estonia, the VAT declaration guide in Estonia, and the OÜ accounting services pricing guide.

To choose based on real numbers, review accounting service and select a service scope that matches your transaction volume and reporting complexity.