The First 100 Days
The Hundred-Day Plan
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Before Day One
- The acquisition entity formed in the state you will operate in, before anything is signed in its name
- A new EIN for the entity: an asset purchase does not inherit the seller's, and payroll, banking, and the licenses all wait on it
- If you are keeping the seller's trade name, the assumed-name registration filed in your entity's name, and the goodwill and marks named in the purchase agreement
- Payroll provider live and tested so nobody's paycheck depends on the transition
- Operating accounts open, card and merchant processing ready to switch at close
- Insurance bound effective at close: liability, workers comp, and anything the lease or lenders require
- Licenses and registrations confirmed effective in your entity's name
- Every system, account, domain, and key physically in your control
- The announcement plan agreed with the seller: who tells employees, customers, and suppliers, in what order, saying what
Closing Day
- Confirm wire instructions by phone on a number you already had, never one from the email; spoofed instructions are how buyers lose the whole down payment
- Walk the funds-flow memo line by line the day before: every wire, who sends it, who confirms receipt
- Payoff letters and lien releases in hand for every seller debt before money moves; you are buying free and clear
- Leave with the full signed set: purchase agreement, notes, lease assignment, non-compete, and the seller's transition agreement
- Keys, codes, and account credentials change hands at the table, not as a promise for next week
Week One
- Meet every employee one on one; listen more than you talk
- Review what is owed and due in the next 30 days; pay the critical vendors visibly on time
- Contact the top customers with the seller's introduction; your only goal is continuity
- Stand up a simple weekly cash report; it is your instrument panel for the first year
- Change nothing operational that is not broken; write your ideas down instead of acting on them
Weeks Two to Four
- Meet key suppliers; confirm terms survive the ownership change
- Start tracking the industry's weekly numbers (each guide lists them) and baseline the first month
- Use the seller's transition hours deliberately: relationships and tribal knowledge first, tasks last
- Deliver one visible, low-risk improvement employees asked for; it buys credibility cheaply
- Close the first month's books on time with your accountant; day-one discipline sets the pattern
Days 30 to 60
- Form your view of the team: who carries the place, who needs support, what pay is below market
- Understand where demand actually comes from and confirm the engine (referrals, contracts, marketing) is running
- Send the lender the first update they asked for, before they ask
- Document the two or three processes that currently live in someone's head, starting with the seller's
Days 60 to 100
- Write the year-one plan from what you now know, not what the CIM said
- Revisit the ideas list from week one; schedule the changes worth making, with the team's input
- Review pricing against the market; decide what moves and when, deliberately
- Set the operating rhythm: the weekly numbers review, the team meeting, the monthly close
- Take a real day off and confirm the business survives it; that test never stops mattering
When the plan reaches the document-the-processes step, the First SOPs worksheet holds the ten to start with, one row each, written as you watch them run.
Back Office Planner
Pick the lines this company needs; the stack prices itself from the vendors' published floors, beside the federal salary-only line for hiring it instead.
The selected stack, at published floors
$182 to $803 a month
A full-time bookkeeper runs $4,223a month at the federal median, salary only, before benefits, software, and employer taxes. This stack's high end is 19% of that line, which is why most companies at this size outsource first and hire when the volume, not the price, demands it.
When Year One Goes Wrong
The plan above ends on day one hundred; most of what unsettles a new owner arrives after it. Each row is what the trouble usually turns out to be, what to do about it this week, and the point where it stops being an operating problem. Judgment, not benchmarks: there is no dataset behind one person's first year. The first row's move has its own tool: the 13-Week Cash Forecast says which week the account runs dry.
10 of 10
| A key employee resigned after closing | The risk the screen flags as key-person risk, arriving. What leaves with them is usually knowledge and relationships, not skill you cannot rehire. | Ask for an exit conversation and a handover list in writing, and pay for it if you must. Then find who else knows each part and document it before the second person leaves. | The departure takes a license, a certification, or the majority of revenue. That is a continuity problem with a clock on it. |
| Cash is tight and the loan payment is close | Almost always working capital, not profitability: receivables stretched, inventory bought ahead, or the seller's float leaving with them. | Build a thirteen-week cash forecast before anything else, then collect the oldest receivables personally and slow discretionary spending. Talk to the lender while you are current, not after you miss. | Two consecutive months where operating cash cannot cover debt service. That is a restructuring conversation with the lender and an advisor, not a stretch. |
| Customers are leaving since the sale | Either the relationship was the seller's, or the service slipped during the transition. The two look identical from a revenue report and need opposite responses. | Call the accounts that left, personally, and ask what happened. Concentration you flagged before closing is the first place to look; a service slip shows up as complaints from customers who stayed. | Losses concentrated in the accounts the purchase price was built on. If the earnout or seller note is still live, the agreement may already speak to it. |
| Prices have not moved in years and margins are thin | Common in owner-operated businesses, where the owner knew every customer and could not face the conversation. It is usually the fastest available margin. | Raise a narrow slice first: one segment, one service line, or new customers only. Measure who actually leaves rather than who complains, because those are different groups. | Volume falls faster than price rises across a full quarter. The market has told you something, and the answer is cost or mix, not price. |
| The business lost money in a quarter you owned | The first year usually carries costs the seller's numbers never did: your salary, the debt service, and the systems they ran without. | Separate the one-time transition costs from the run rate and rebuild the projection on what you now know. A loss that disappears when you remove the transition is a very different business from one that does not. | Two quarters where the loss survives that separation. The price assumed earnings that are not there, and the fix is operational, not financial. |
| The seller will not step back | A seller who built the business often has nowhere else to be, and staff keep asking them because it is faster than asking you. | Return to the written transition terms and reset them: the days, the hours, and what they are for. Route every question through you for a fortnight, even the ones they could answer. | They are contradicting your decisions in front of staff or customers. The transition agreement is a contract, and this is the moment to use it. |
| The team has not accepted you | Almost never about you. Staff who watched an owner sell are waiting to learn whether their job changed, and silence reads as bad news. | Say what is not changing, specifically and in public, then keep one visible promise a week for a month. Ask the longest-tenured employee what they would fix and fix it. | A supervisor actively working against the change. That is a personnel decision, and delaying it costs the goodwill of everyone watching. |
| You cannot get out from under the day to day | You bought a job because the screen said the owner was central and the deal was good anyway. Every owner-operated business does this to its buyer for a while. | Write down every task only you can do, then pick the two that are most repeatable and train someone this month. Repeat every few months; there is no faster version. | A year in with no task delegated. The business will not grow past you, and that decides what it is worth when you sell. |
| You think you overpaid | Usually true in some measure and usually irrelevant, because the price is spent. What matters now is whether the business covers its debt and pays you. | Re-underwrite the business you actually own, at today's earnings, and read the coverage. That number decides everything; the multiple you paid decides nothing you can still act on. | Coverage below the line at a normal year's earnings. Then the price is not a regret, it is a structural problem, and the seller note is where a conversation can start. |
| You want out of the business you bought | Sometimes the right answer and rarely at the right moment. A business sold in distress prices as distress, and the first year is when everything looks worst. | Separate the business from the year: fix the cash, take a week off the floor, and re-read the numbers. If the wish survives a good quarter, it is real. | It survives that test. Then it is a sale, and the seller wing of this site is written for exactly that position. |
The Scorecard for the Year After
The plan ends on day one hundred; the year after runs on a handful of numbers, and they differ by trade. Seeded from each industry's own guide, filled the same day each week.
WEEKLY SCORECARD: ACCOUNTING OR BOOKKEEPING PRACTICE Fill it the same day each week; the trend column is the one that talks. Metric | This week | Last week | Trend Client retention by service line | | | Recurring monthly engagements versus annual work | | | Realization on billed hours | | | Fee levels versus market | | | Staff capacity through peak season | | | Cash in the operating account | | | New inquiries or booked work | | |