The New Business Checklist: 22 Items, Costs, and Deadlines

How many items are on a new business checklist

A new business checklist has 22 items across 5 phases, and 7 of them cost $0. Done lean, the whole list costs about $1,045 in the first year; done with hired help, the first year reaches $36,397, and the guide to how much it costs to start a business breaks those totals down line by line.

The government checklists are short and link-heavy. The IRS checklist for starting a business is the federal one to keep open in a tab. What none of them tell you is what each item costs or when it's due, so that's what this page adds.

Work top to bottom. The order matters because some items are cheap to do early and expensive to redo later, like settling the name before you pay for a logo. If you want the reasoning behind the order rather than a list, the guide on how to start a business has it. Here's the whole checklist in one table.

The new business checklist, with costs and deadlines

The checklist runs from $0 items you can finish tonight to a $15,000 identity package you may not need in year one, and the When column matters as much as the Cost column.

Read it by phase. Phases 1 and 2 are cheap: the biggest required fees are Massachusetts' $500 LLC filing and its $500 annual report, and the only optional three-figure item is a $350 trademark. Phase 4 is where the money goes, because it's the part your customers see.

Two items say optional, and I mean it. The trademark and the identity package can both wait until customers prove the name. Everything else I'd do in order, starting with Phase 1 before you spend a dollar.

Phase 1: plan and price the business before you spend

Phase 1 costs $0 and covers 3 items: a break-even number, a rate check on the help you'll hire, and a look at the license rules where you'll operate.

The break-even formula comes from the SBA's startup cost guide: Fixed Costs ÷ (Price − Variable Costs) = the number of sales you need. A designer selling $300 beginner logos with no delivery costs needs 4 sales to cover a $1,045 first-year lean budget ($1,045 ÷ $300 = 3.48, rounded up).

Before you ask anyone for a quote, look up the going rate. Freelance rates in WhatShouldICharge's BLS-based data put a copywriter at $85 an hour recommended and a photographer at $150. A quote far from rate × hours deserves a question before a deposit.

Then check license rules. The SBA's licenses and permits guide separates federal licenses from state and local ones, and checking costs nothing. Once you know the rules, Phase 2 makes the business legal.

Phase 2: make the business legal

Phase 2 costs $40 to $500 in state registration fees, $0 for the EIN, and $350 per class if you add a trademark.

Structure: $0 to decide. An LLC protects personal assets in most instances, while a sole proprietor can be held personally liable for business debts, according to the SBA's business structure guide, and the sole proprietor vs LLC vs S corp comparison runs the tax side.

Registration: $40 for a Kentucky LLC, $300 in Texas, and $500 in Massachusetts. The SBA's register your business page puts total registration under $300 in most cases, and your secretary of state has the exact fee.

EIN: $0. The IRS says you never have to pay a fee for an EIN, so close any site that asks for money.

Licenses and permits: Washington charges a $50 state processing fee to open a new business, per the Washington Department of Revenue. City and county fees come on top.

Annual report: $15 a year in Kentucky and $500 in Massachusetts, per the Massachusetts fee schedule and the Kentucky filing fees page.

Trademark: $350 per class at the USPTO, and optional in year one. With the legal side done, Phase 3 keeps the money straight.

Phase 3: set up business money and records

Phase 3 costs $0 to $19 a month for bookkeeping software and $500 to $1,500 a year for liability insurance, a WhatShouldICharge estimate I'd use until you hold a real quote.

Bank account: open it before the first payment lands, and check the monthly fee on your bank's schedule. One account for the business and one for you is the cheapest bookkeeping decision you'll ever make.

Bookkeeping software: Wave's pricing page lists a $0 Starter plan and a $19 a month Pro plan. A spreadsheet works for month one and stops working the first time you need a receipt in a hurry.

Tax set-aside: self-employment tax is 15.3% of 92.35% of net profit, so on $50,000 of profit it's about $7,065 ($50,000 × 0.9235 × 0.153). The tax set-aside calculator sizes the full amount with income tax included.

Start-up receipts: you can elect to deduct up to $5,000 of start-up costs in year one, per the IRS instructions for Form 4562, so keep every pre-launch receipt. Then comes the phase most people enjoy, the brand.

Phase 4: build the brand and online presence

Phase 4 is the expensive phase: a logo costs $300 to $5,000, website copy $1,500 to $8,000, and a freelance brochure site $2,000 to $8,000.

Do it in this order: domain, logo, copy, photos, site. The domain is $10 to $35 a year, and I'd buy it the day the name is final. The logo comes next, and the graphic designer rate calculator shows what the hours in a logo quote should cost.

The mistake I'd stop you from making is paying for the site before the words exist. A developer building without final copy ends up building twice. Photography follows, at $500 to $1,500 for a half day.

The site itself is last. A DIY builder costs $145 to $640 a year, and a five-page site on a purchased theme costs $2,500 to $4,000; check a build quote against the web developer rate calculator.

If you need more than a logo, a brand identity package runs $2,500 to $15,000, and a brand strategist at the recommended $175 an hour is who you'd hire for the thinking behind it. I'd wait until customers have told you what they like about you. With the assets built, Phase 5 is about getting found.

Phase 5: launch marketing for a new business

Launch marketing starts at $0 with a Google Business Profile, and a first month of hired social media management for a small local business costs $500 to $1,500.

Claim the profile in launch week. Google Business Profile Help says you can manage how your business shows up on Maps and Search at no charge.

Then decide whether month one is paid with your time or your money. If it's money, set one number for month one and a separate number for months two through twelve, because $500 a month becomes $6,000 a year ($500 × 12). The next section prices your own time against a quote.

How to work out which checklist items to do yourself

Work out DIY or hire by dividing each quote by the freelancer's hourly rate: a $1,500 website copy project at the recommended $85 an hour buys about 17.6 hours of a copywriter's time ($1,500 ÷ $85).

Then ask yourself two questions. Would it take you more hours than that? Would those hours be better spent selling? If both answers are yes, hire.

Here's the same math on the other big items, at WhatShouldICharge recommended rates. A $2,500 five-page site at $105 an hour is about 23.8 hours ($2,500 ÷ $105). A $500 half-day shoot at $150 an hour is about 3.3 hours ($500 ÷ $150). A $900 mid-level logo at $75 an hour is 12 hours ($900 ÷ $75).

The legal items flip the math. Their fees run $0 to $500 whoever files, so paying a service to file adds cost without changing the fee. I'd do those myself and spend the savings on the brand. The project hours estimator runs this for any quote, and the WhatShouldICharge methodology shows where the rates come from. Whatever you do yourself or hire out, keep the paper trail.

Business records to keep, and for how long

Keep most business tax records for 3 years, and employment tax records for at least 4 years after the tax is due or paid, whichever is later, per the IRS guide on how long to keep records. Receipts behind business assets and amortized start-up costs are the exception: keep them until the period of limitations expires for the year you dispose of the property, since the same IRS page says they support amortization, depreciation, and any gain on sale.

Here's the folder I'd set up on day one: the state filing receipt for your $40 to $500 fee, your EIN confirmation, license approvals with renewal dates, every pre-launch receipt for the start-up cost election, your insurance policy, and signed contracts with anyone you hired, including who owns the logo and the words.

The IRS page lists the situations that need longer. The questions below cover what people ask most once they start ticking boxes.