The start of a new year is an ideal time for businesses to review and renew, and to resolve to make this year better than the last. Here's a five-step checklist to get your business started — or restarted in 2020.

Step 1: Review Your Business Plan 
You remember your business plan, don't you? Creating it was one of the many items on your checklist leading up to your launch. And while it probably contained a fair amount of boilerplate language, it likely served as a pretty good roadmap for your prospective business from day one all the way through your exit strategy.

You might be surprised how much you could gain by reviewing your plan today. Whether you're ending year one or year four of your five-year plan, it can be helpful to remind yourself of what your original goals were, along with your projected trajectory for achieving them. Has your business substantially changed since the day you opened your doors? If so, why? Is it because the market has changed? Or is it your company that's changed, based on what you've learned along the way?

Many small-business owners start out doing everything themselves: sales, marketing, HR, IT, even keeping their own books. As they stretch themselves thinner and thinner, they try to offload as many responsibilities as they can in an attempt to keep up.

If you're thinking of starting a small business, you can learn from this common mistake. Identify what's core to your business, and what can be outsourced, before you open your doors. Take advantage of all the cost-effective expertise that's available today. Because the DIY, learn-as-you-go approach to things like bookkeeping can result in costly, easily avoidable mistakes.

From Recording Transactions to Financial Reporting and Forecasting
In simplest terms, a bookkeeper records a company's financial transactions at regular chronological intervals — day by day, in most cases. While the definition is fairly straightforward, keeping up with a company's financial reporting can be time-consuming and complicated, depending on the nature of the business.