Days 1–30: the baseline
Almost every business we start working with has a version of the same gap: the owner has a feel for how the business is doing, but nothing written down that a bank, an investor, or a new hire's offer letter could rely on. The first month is spent closing that gap — reconciling the last twelve months if the books need it, standardizing the chart of accounts, and producing a set of financials that actually reflect how the business runs, not just how the software defaulted to categorize things.
This month rarely produces exciting advice. It produces the thing everything after it depends on.
Days 31–60: the forecast
With clean historicals in place, the second month builds a rolling cash-flow forecast — typically thirteen weeks out, sometimes longer depending on the business's cycle. This is where seasonal businesses usually see, often for the first time in writing, exactly how tight a specific month is going to be and how much runway they actually have going into it.
We also start a pricing and margin review in this window: which services or products carry the business, and which are quietly subsidized by the others.
Days 61–90: the decisions
By the third month, there's enough of a forecast and margin picture to make specific recommendations — a price increase on an underpriced line, a hiring decision that can or can't be supported by the cash-flow model, a lender conversation if the forecast shows a gap worth financing ahead of instead of reacting to. This is also typically when we set the format for the ongoing monthly meeting: the handful of numbers the owner actually needs to see, and the decision the meeting exists to make.
What happens after 90 days
The engagement doesn't end at 90 days — it changes shape. The forecast gets updated monthly instead of built from scratch, and the meetings shift from 'here is what we found' to 'here is what changed and what we're doing about it.' The value compounds the longer it runs, because each month adds another data point the forecast gets better at using.
This is general information, not tax advice.