An honest, up-to-date checklist. What's urgent, what can wait, what each step costs, and where to do it yourself. Four phases: Day 1, Week 1, Month 1, and Month 3 onward.
Free. The whole checklist, formatted to print.
Most "start a business" lists throw forty tasks at you in no order, as if registering for tax matters as much as landing your first customer. It doesn't. So before the checklist, here's the frame we use, borrowed from Michael Porter's value chain.
Every business splits into two:
"Nothing happens until someone agrees to buy something."
That is the oldest truth in business, and the reason sales and marketing sit in the core, right next to the work itself, not down in the support pile. You can be brilliant at what you do, but until someone agrees to buy, there is no business.
The rest of this page is the practical checklist: first the core, then the foundation that keeps it legal and safe, in the order that actually matters.
Four phases. Not all of them are urgent on day one. The point of this checklist is to take the panic out of "what do I still need to do?" by separating now from next from later.
Before any of the admin further down, this is the part that actually makes a business. Four things. None of them need a big budget on day one.
Marketing is getting in front of the people who could buy from you. It does not have to cost anything to start, and the warmest, cheapest channels almost always work best first.
A stranger decides whether you are a real, safe business in seconds, usually before they ever speak to you. Credibility is the set of signals that make that decision an easy yes.
Sales is just someone agreeing to buy. It is the only thing that turns effort into money, which is why it sits in the core and not in a "later" pile. You do not need a funnel or a sales team on day one. You need conversations, and the nerve to ask.
Operations is the actual work: doing it well, on time, to a standard people will pay for again. It is easy to over-think this before you have a single customer. Don't.
These make you legal and bankable. We don't do them for you, they need your ID, your signature, or your face on a video call, but most are quick and you can do them yourself. Here's what each one is, why it matters, and where to do it.
This one choice shapes everything after it: your tax, your paperwork, and whether your personal assets are on the line. For most new businesses in South Africa it comes down to two options.
Only if you chose a company above. Skip it entirely if you're a sole proprietor. CIPC (the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission) is the government registrar, and doing it yourself is cheaper and easier than most people expect.
You can't co-mingle business and personal money. Open this the day your CIPC papers come through.
If you registered a company, CIPC already created your income-tax number automatically. A sole proprietor uses their own tax number. The active steps:
These don't block trading, but they catch up with you fast if you ignore them.
Stop using a spreadsheet. Pick one and stick with it.
You're processing personal data the moment you have a contact form. POPIA is not optional.
Skip if you don't sell anything online or in person.
Optional but cheap relative to the worst case.
You don't need any of these on day one. Don't let anyone sell them to you on day one.
This is the marketing function from the top of this page, now with a budget behind it. The principle does not change: warm and free before cold and paid. The order that works for most new businesses:
Here is the principle that matters more than any tool: respond fast. Speed is the single biggest lever on whether an enquiry becomes a sale. A lead answered in five minutes converts far better than the same lead answered the next day, because you reached them while they still cared. Be the business that replies first.
Only if your customers ask for it (corporate clients, government tenders).
These are independent recommendations. We earn no commission on anything listed here, and there are no paid placements on this checklist. We point you at what we'd use ourselves or have actively evaluated. If that ever changes, we'll say so plainly, right here.
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You can do everything on this page yourself. If you'd rather not build the credibility layer by hand, that's the part we do, in a day. Here's exactly what we touch, and what stays yours.
Where a provider above does it well, we point you to them.
The credibility layer, done for you