The first 90 days of a new business: build a week you can live with.

Start with a short look ahead, a daily check of today's commitments and a regular money review. Monday and Friday are convenient examples, not rules. A shop open all weekend may need a very different rhythm from a weekday contractor.

At the look-ahead, check the jobs, people, materials and customer decisions needed. In the daily check, find the next action and anything that changed. At the money review, look at payments, unpaid invoices and the bills coming next. Keep the checks short enough that you actually return to them.

Researchers David McKenzie and Christopher Woodruff surveyed more than 20,000 small firms in seven countries. Better practices in areas such as marketing, stock, records and planning were associated with stronger business performance. The research covered developing-country settings; it wasn't a test of US startups or a particular weekly routine. (McKenzie and Woodruff: business practices in small firms)

For your own business, start by asking what a record helps you decide. A list of customer follow-ups helps you see who is waiting. Job time and costs help you price the next visit. A very impressive dashboard that changes no decision may just be another thing to maintain.

You don't need every possible report. Start with the information you'd otherwise have to reconstruct while someone waits on the phone.

Use 30, 60 and 90 days as reminders to pause. They aren't deadlines for landing a customer or making a profit. Different businesses have very different setup times and buying cycles.

1. Around day 30: check the assumptions

   Compare what customers asked for with what you offered. Look at the real time and cost of any work delivered, and change the next test if needed.

2. Around day 60: look for repetition

   Which questions, jobs or delays keep returning? Write a reusable checklist or template for a familiar job, then adapt it for each customer.

3. Around day 90: choose what to keep

   Review prices, cash needs and workload. Keep the practices that help, change the ones that create avoidable work, and decide what deserves the next month.

Use business management software when you can say what it should help with: finding a customer note, sharing a changed task or seeing the week's projects. In BizzyBot, you can start with customer records, projects and calendars, then hide the tools you don't use.

When a familiar project returns, a template can save setting up its steps again. When work moves between people, Flows can carry tasks through the sequence and approvals you set. You still decide what the job needs; the tool keeps the agreed steps together.

At the end of the review, remove or change one source of avoidable work. It might be an unnecessary report, a repeated explanation that needs a clear note, or an offer whose travel time makes the numbers impossible.

You started a business because you wanted something from the work and the life around it. Keep that in the review too. A fuller calendar is only an improvement if it is filling with work worth doing.