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Top Tips for Starting a new Business in 2026

Kirsty Young Advice and Tips, Business Tips

Are you planning to launch your new business in 2026?

Congratulations! We know it can feel really exciting, but also somewhat overwhelming!

As busy business accountants, we are always thrilled to work with great new start-ups every day, right across the UK. We love seeing how many of these fledgling businesses fly and thrive from day 1, simply because they started with the right approach..

So, drawing on their numerous success stories, we’ve put together a few key tips for you to help your new business take flight.

 

1. It all starts with a plan

Many new businesses owners make a key mistake that affects their business from the very start – simply not planning their finances. You don’t need to create an in-depth or complex business plan, but you do need to think about these core financial questions:

  • How am I going to fund my new business?
  • How long can I go before getting paid?
  • What happens if it takes longer than expected to get customers?
  • What happens if my customers do not pay me on time, or delay payments?
  • What are the tax implications of my business, and how might it impact on my take home ‘pay’?
  • What is my business ‘model’ ? Does it work?

And the one many owners forget:

  • How much cash do I have to survive on personally?

Your first step

The first step is to get to grips with the figures, what they are and what they tell you,. For a no-nonsense explanation, check out our cashflow blog. Even if you’ve been involved in businesses for years, do read this first. Running your own business is very different to working for one.

This blog includes a free downloadable, (very) simple spreadsheet that you can use to help you plan your business finances.

The myth of loss

Many new business owners like you, may presume that the business will need to run at a loss for years. This is not the case. While it’s ok to make a loss in business, it’s better that it doesn’t happen for too long. The danger is that believing in the loss-making myth can make you content with running at a loss, and not making money!

The key to getting off to a good start is to generate cash as quickly as possible, and be profitable on paper.

 

2. Know what you are offering

This might sound obvious, but make sure you know your product or service before you start. You need to clearly understand:

  • What you are selling
  • How you will price your products / services
  • The target customer/clients – “who does this help?”
  • The benefits to the customer/client – “how does this help?”

Benefits not features

That final point is a key issue often overlooked by business owners. We’re talking benefits here, not features. You’ll need to know the difference if you are to effectively sell your products. “State of the art AI technology” is a feature, “Saves you over 20 hours of processing time each week” is a benefit.

In a nutshell

Now that you know what your business is about, you need to be able to describe it to others quickly and effectively, at the drop of a hat, or at least at your next networking meeting!

  • Explain what you do in a short statement (aka your elevator pitch)
  • Be able to easily answer the question “How much does it cost, and exactly what will I get?”
  • Have worked out the answer to “Why does the market actually want my product?”
  • Explain what is different about your offering (aka your USP – Unique Selling Point)

We ask many new business owners these exact questions. We’re always a little surprised with the lack of clarity in their answers.

This lack of clarity will be a major problem when you are trying to find and communicate your value to potential customers/clients, not to mention potential investors.

 

3. Plan how you will find and secure your first customers

Many new business start-ups believe it is easy to get customers or clients.

It isn’t, at least not without some serious effort. You need to work out in detail how you are going to reach the customers you need.

New customer myths

Let’s bust some myths about getting new customers:

  • The internet is not an instant magic wand for gaining customers, although it is a key part of your business strategy.
  • Having a new shiny website does not mean people will miraculously do business with you in the next 30 days. (If only!) Indeed, a new website may take up to six months to attract Google’s attention, gain its respect, and get ranked. It also needs to be attractive for AI chatbot searches (e.g. ChatGPT) as well as search engines.
  • Networking events help you connect with other businesses, which is a very good thing in the long run. However, attending a few events won’t magically generate customers/clients in a short time frame. It will help build long-term relationships that can become a constant source of clients.

Time and effort

All of the above can and do work, but they take a lot of time and effort.

  • If you don’t have a solid financial plan, time can quickly be a key issue.
  • You can be in danger of running out of cash whilst you wait for customers and new clients to start to nibble, let alone bite.

You need to factor in time working on as well as money spent on your marketing. Having a firm idea of what you will do with your marketing and sales is very important. As most business owners will tell you, achieving that balance of growing your business and actually operating it will be a constant challenge.

If you have spent a decent length of time working in a given sector, and your new business continues in this area, often the connections you have made can help speed up how quickly you can gain customers and clients!

 

4. Decide what you are going to trade ‘as’ (Structure)

There are a few options for your ‘business structures’. For most businesses, it usually comes down to a choice between setting up as:

  • a limited company

or

Whatever way you choose, there will be tax paperwork that will need to be completed with HMRC regardless.

  • For sole traders, you have until 5th October following the end of tax year you began trading to register with them online. So if you starting trading in February 2026, you have until 5th October 2026 to register.
  • For limited companies, you will usually register for corporation tax as part of the process of creating the limited company.

 

5. Set up your finance system

Now having decided the structure of your business, you need a finance system to manage all your finances. With HMRC’s digital strategy it’s more important than ever to keep your records digitally.

We recommend using a cloud accounting application like Xero. With a cloud accounting application like Xero you can:

  • Capture all of your receipts and expenses,
  • Invoice your clients or customers,
  • Automatically import your bank transaction so you can categorise them for accounting purposes
  • Set up integrations with payment processors like Stripe, GoCardless, etc

Use your system from the start

Setting up and learning to use your finance system while the business is in its early stage is always a solid plan. So, when times get busy you have automations already running to save time, and a slick process you are comfortable with to ensure you only spend the time you need to doing book-keeping.

Payment terms

Finally, when it comes to finance systems, it’s worth mentioning ‘payment terms’.

This is the amount of time you give customers or clients to pay their bill.

The reason we make this point is that we often speak to owners who have given their clients 30 days to pay because they thought it was ‘the done thing’.

There is no default, or set time frame you must give. You get to set the rules.

With late payments being a massive problem in the small business world, reducing the amount of time until you get paid is key to maintaining solid cashflow as you grow.

There will be occasions where your contract dictates when you will get paid (usually where you are the smaller business!). Where you can choose your own payment terms, try to give the minimum time to pay, or ideally, get paid upfront!

 

6. Consistency and action is key

Consistency is vital. Whether it’s financial planning, keeping accounts, or your marketing and sales campaigns, the consistency of repeating these key tasks over time is critical to business success.

Sadly, we see these ‘fails’ all too often:

  • Being amazing at planning finances at the early stage, but then hardly looking at anything other than your bank balance after that.
  • Not following up with that prospect you spoke to. Huge mistake.
  • Not concentrating on service and communication – clients need to know that you’re listening and helping.
  • Posting a dull post every day on your social media for 2 weeks, not getting much (if any) interaction, and then giving up as “It’s not working”.

Consistency requires action

In order to achieve consistency, you need action. Many people say they are going to start a new business. However, they never put in the actions required to turn their dream into business reality.

There’s no easy way of saying this.

Show up, do the boring stuff regularly, and you will have more success.

 

7. Feel free to break up the Lego

Building a business is like building something in Lego:

  • Sometimes you might not construct it properly, and it needs rebuilding.
  • Sometimes it just needs a little tidying up, as you didn’t love the end result.
  • Sometimes the foundations are shaky, and you have to demolish most of it.

Be content with the fact that it’s very likely that things are going to go wrong, and the assumptions you made will turn out not to be true.

Rebuilding, changing direction and constant tweaking are all part of the business journey, so embrace it. Get over the losses quickly, and go again.

No such thing as perfect

From working with thousands of businesses over the years, our main message is that launching, learning and tweaking is better than waiting until your offering is ‘perfect’.

 

8. Prepare for the strain

Being in business is tough and often lonely, so you need to build your resilience.

  • Find business communities and groups that you can bounce ideas off.
  • Nurture these groups in case you need a shoulder to cry on when challenging times or set backs inevitably come.

Both of these will be a massive support to you personally. These groups can also be your biggest cheerleaders and a great place to celebrate your wins.

In short, for your business to thrive and grow, you need to be cope with the journey! Good luck!

 

Help is at hand

For further help with starting up a business, subscribe to our YouTube Channel for video content. We’ve also built up an extensive article library here at our website – feel free to browse around. If you prefer listening to podcasts, great, we have one of these as well right here.

For in-person help sorting out your business structure and planning your finances, just get in touch with the team.

 

 

 

About the author:

Dan Heelan is the Business Services Director of Heelan Associates, an accounting firm that helps small business owners across the UK start, survive, and grow.

With a background as a small business owner himself, he discovered his passion for accounting and tax early in his journey and now focuses on empowering fellow entrepreneurs with the knowledge and tools to navigate the financial side of running a business.

You can see and hear Dan in action in his regular: