Module 6: Running It Right
Formation is the beginning, not the finish. This final module is about the daily and monthly habits that keep the LLC healthy: separating money, simple bookkeeping you can actually maintain, and knowing when a professional earns their fee. It ends with the compliance checklist you'll live by.
Separating Business and Personal Money
- Business income → business account. Business expenses → business card. Always.
- Pay yourself with recorded owner draws; fund the business with recorded owner contributions.
- If you slip up and pay a business expense personally, reimburse yourself from the business account and record it — one clean paper trail beats a mystery.
Same discipline applies to contracts and communications: sign as the LLC, invoice as the LLC, and keep the LLC's name on everything customer-facing. Separation isn't one big decision — it's a hundred small ones, and each one either strengthens or weakens the wall.
Paying personal expenses from the business account "just this once." Every personal transaction through the business account is a thread a creditor can pull to pierce your liability shield. The shield only works if you treat the LLC like it's real.
Your path
Business income → business account
Every dollar of business income goes into the business account.
Business expenses → business card
Every business expense is paid from the business account with the LLC's card.
Pay yourself: owner draw
A deliberate, recorded transfer from the business account to your personal account.
Fund it: owner contribution
Personal money going the other way — documented, never casual.
Build brief
How will you pay yourself — regular transfers, as-needed draws — and how will you record each payment so the paper trail is clean?
Saved
Simple Bookkeeping with a Spreadsheet
You don't need accounting software on day one — you need a spreadsheet you actually update. Set up one tab with these columns: Date, Description, Category, Amount In, Amount Out, Running Balance. Every business transaction gets one row. Categories stay simple: Revenue, Cost of Goods, Marketing, Software/Tools, Travel, Meals (business only), Professional Fees, Owner Draw, Owner Contribution, Other.
The routine is weekly, fifteen minutes: open the business bank account, log every transaction since last time, and attach or note the receipt. Monthly, reconcile — meaning you confirm the spreadsheet's running balance matches the bank statement to the penny. If it doesn't, find the missing row before the month ends; a gap you chase in December is ten times harder than one you chase this week. At year end, this spreadsheet is what your accountant works from, and clean books mean a cheaper tax return.
- One tab, six columns: date, description, category, in, out, balance.
- Weekly 15-minute entry; monthly reconciliation to the penny.
- Keep receipts for everything — a photo in a folder counts.
Fifteen minutes a week
Bookkeeping in numbers
Monthly bookkeeping checklist (30 minutes):
☐ All income recorded: $___
☐ All expenses categorized: $___
☐ Receipts saved (photo or scan)
☐ Business vs personal: zero mixing confirmed
☐ Estimated tax set aside: $___
☐ Anything confusing flagged for accountant: ___
Build brief
Describe your bookkeeping honestly as it stands today. What's the one habit from this module you'd need to start this week?
Saved
When to Hire a Lawyer or Accountant
Doing it yourself is the point of this course — and knowing your limits is part of doing it well. Hire a business attorney when: you're bringing on partners or investors (the operating agreement needs to be airtight), you're in a regulated or high-liability industry, you're signing a commercial lease or a major contract with real downside, or you've been threatened with a lawsuit. A few hundred dollars for document review is cheap insurance against a five-figure mistake.
Hire an accountant or CPA when: you're considering the S-corp election (the salary-vs-distribution math and the filing deadlines are worth professional modeling), you have employees (payroll taxes have zero tolerance for errors), you operate in multiple states (nexus rules get complicated fast), or tax season arrives and your situation has outgrown the spreadsheet. Many CPAs offer a one-time consultation for a few hundred dollars — bring your books and your questions, and you'll leave with a plan.
- Lawyer: partners, investors, regulated work, big contracts, legal threats.
- Accountant: S-corp election, employees, multi-state operations, complex tax years.
- One-time consultations exist for both — you don't need a retainer to get expert eyes on one decision.
Think of professionals as leverage, not failure. You did the formation, the EIN, the bank account, and the bookkeeping yourself — that's real money saved and real knowledge earned. Hiring help for the two or three decisions with genuine downside is just good business judgment.
Know your limits
When to call a professional
| Situation | Call |
|---|---|
| Partners, investors, big contracts, legal threats | A business attorney |
| S-corp math, employees, multi-state, complex tax years | A CPA or accountant |
| One-time question | A few hundred dollars buys a consultation |
Build brief
Name two situations where you'd call a lawyer or accountant instead of handling it yourself. What's your plan for finding the right one?
Saved
Open a separate business bank account this week — or write down exactly what you need to open one (EIN letter, Articles, ID) and schedule the appointment.
Which habit does the MOST to keep your LLC's liability wall intact?
Your Ongoing Compliance Checklist
Print this, pin it, live by it. These are the recurring tasks that keep an LLC in good standing year after year. Most of them take minutes — the cost is entirely in remembering, so tie each one to a calendar reminder the first time you do it.