The first 90 days after you buy a business

By Josh Elberg, founder of Palavir · Published · Updated

Palavir is a Michigan data and automation consultancy.

Short answer

Close the day-one gaps first: bank accounts, licenses, bill pay, vendor agreements and payroll.

Then write down what the seller knows while they are still available.

Only then move routine work to software, starting with bookkeeping and getting paid. Customer-facing work goes last.

What breaks on day one and day two?

A Searchfunder thread (a secondary source, from a community of people who buy small businesses) asked buyers what they were missing six months after closing. The day-two list was below. It is forum discussion, not a statistic, but it is a useful list for your first week (thread).

  • Bank accounts. Who can sign, and which account payments land in.
  • Licenses. Which transfer to you and which need a new application.
  • Bill pay. Which bills are paid automatically, from where, and when they come due.
  • Vendor agreements. Whose name is on each one, and any unwritten terms with a supplier.
  • Payroll. Who runs it, when the next run is, and what the staff were promised.

Another pattern from the same community: the owner's quoting, sales and customer relationships are often held in the owner's head. Plan introductions to key customers with the seller present.

How do you capture what the seller knows?

Ask for real incidents and live work, then check the answers against the books. This is our plan, built from established interview methods, and nobody has published a validation of it for small-business handovers.

  1. Interview about past incidents. Ask about the worst customer, the biggest mistake, an unusual order, a price exception. Exceptions are what no manual covers.
  2. Watch the work and have them think aloud. Ask the seller to do a real task, such as invoicing, ordering, quoting or month-end, and say what they are doing and why. This captures the steps as done, not as remembered.
  3. Teach it back. Read each rule back in plain words and ask whether it is right. The seller can say yes, no, or "it depends on...", which is often the useful answer.
  4. Check the stated rules against the books. If the seller says every customer gets net-30 terms, count the invoices that say something else. Treat a rule found in the books as a guess until the seller confirms it.
  5. Record the sessions, with consent. Michigan law (MCL 750.539c; Michigan only, other states differ) makes it a felony to eavesdrop on a private conversation without the consent of all parties. Get everyone's consent in writing, record only the seller's screen, and ask an attorney before recording employees or customers.

If the purchase was SBA-financed, the seller's paid time has its own rules. See SBA SOP 50 10 8.1 Changes: the 24-month seller rule.

How does routine work move to software without breaking things?

Our plan is four steps, each reversible:

  1. Step 1, learn and write down. The rules are captured and nothing changes in how the business runs.
  2. Step 2, alongside. Software does the task next to the person, and the two results are compared.
  3. Step 3, software does it. A person approves the result.
  4. Step 4, it runs. A person sees flags and a weekly summary.

A person can move any task back a step at any time. Customer-facing work moves last. Payments never move: money goes out only when a person sends it. The software accounts sit in the new owner's name.

What should you automate first?

Bookkeeping and getting paid first. The rules sit in the records, so they can be checked against the books, and a wrong result shows up in a number a person can read. Customer-facing work goes last, with drafts approved by a person. In the 228 listings that got a closer AI read, the AI model proposed software for bookkeeping and getting paid in 54% and for customer messages in 68%. Those are model proposals, not measured savings. The full order, with the evidence, is in what to automate first after you buy.

What is a checklist for a new owner?

Our arrangement of the lists above. Adjust it to your business and your lender's terms.

First: close the gaps

  • Bank accounts: signers, and where payments land
  • Licenses: what transfers, what needs a new application
  • Bill pay: what is automatic, from which account, due when
  • Vendor agreements: whose name, any unwritten terms
  • Payroll: who runs it, next run date, staff promises
  • Meet staff and the biggest customers with the seller present
  • Get written consent for any recording; agree the seller's schedule

Next: write it down, then run it alongside

  • Incident interviews on the exceptions
  • Watch and record the live tasks: invoicing, ordering, quoting, month-end
  • Teach each rule back and mark it confirmed or rejected
  • Check stated rules against the books and ask about the gaps
  • Once those rules are confirmed, software works alongside people on bookkeeping and invoices; compare the results each week

Then: software does it, a person approves

  • Bookkeeping and getting paid run in software, with a person approving
  • Reorders and prices next, once the rules are confirmed
  • Customer replies as drafts a person approves, last of all
  • Set the weekly summary and the flags that tell you something is off
  • Taper the seller's hours as the written rules cover more, and decide what moves back a step
Sources and method

Why customer-facing work goes last. The best independent evidence is a study of 5,179 support agents at one large firm (Brynjolfsson, Li and Raymond, NBER, paper). An AI assistant raised issues resolved per hour by 14% on average, and by 34% for novices, with little effect on experienced agents. It worked alongside human agents, and the firm was not a small business.

A Gartner survey of 5,728 customers found 64% would prefer that companies not use AI for customer service, and the top fear was not reaching a human (Gartner release).

A business owns what its software tells customers. In Moffatt v. Air Canada (2024), a Canadian tribunal held the airline liable for a refund policy its chatbot invented.

Use is still early. The Census Bureau reports that about 17% to 20% of US firms used AI from December 2025 to May 2026, and under 20% of firms with four or fewer employees (Census Bureau).

Interview methods. Critical Decision Method: Klein, Calderwood and MacGregor (1989), IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics 19(3). Think-aloud: Ericsson and Simon (1980), Psychological Review. Teach-back comes from health care, where it confirms that a message was understood.

Recording law. MCL 750.539c. The rules for recording as a participant are unsettled at the state's top court. Palavir is not a law firm.

Buyer forum posts (secondary): what did you find out you were missing 6 months after close, post-close transition and knowledge transfer.

Deal Scout. Close-read figures are from 228 listings that an AI model read closely and software re-checked against the listing text; no person verified them. Method on what the 6,104 listings show.

What this data cannot tell you

  • The day-one list and the patterns come from buyer forum posts. They are reported experience, not measured rates.
  • The interview methods and the four-step plan are our design. They are not validated for small-business handovers.
  • General information, not legal, tax or lending advice.

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First 90 days questions

What new owners ask after the sale closes.

I bought a business, now what?

Start with the gaps that stop the business on day one: bank accounts, licenses, bill pay, vendor agreements and payroll. Then use the seller's remaining time to write down how the business actually runs, before they leave. Move routine work to software only after you can describe it, beginning with bookkeeping and getting paid.

What is a post acquisition integration checklist for a small business?

For a one-company purchase there is no second company to merge. The checklist is about access, knowledge and routine. Access means accounts, licenses, vendor and payroll items in your name. Knowledge means the seller's rules and relationships, written down. Routine means which recurring jobs a person still does. The checklist on this page covers all three.

What goes wrong in the first months after buying a business?

Searchfunder posts from buyers, which are secondary sources, describe the same patterns: admin gaps on day two, owner knowledge that was never written down, customers who were tied to the previous owner, and sellers whose cooperation fades. Treat these as reported experience from buyers. They are not measured rates.

How do I get the previous owner to share what they know?

Ask about specific past incidents rather than general rules, ask them to do real tasks while you watch and record, and read each rule back to them to confirm it. Then check the stated rules against the books. Recording laws vary by state. Get everyone's written consent and ask an attorney. If the sale was SBA-financed, SBA SOP 50 10 8.1 allows the seller to stay on as a consultant for up to 24 months in aggregate. Confirm with your lender how that applies to your deal.

What should I automate first in a business I just bought?

Bookkeeping and getting paid. The rules are written down in the books, mistakes show up in the numbers, and a person can check the result. Customer-facing work goes last, and drafts should be approved by a person. The full order is on the what to automate page.

Can software run a small business with nobody involved?

In Palavir's read of 228 businesses for sale, 0 could run with nobody at all. In 70 of them, what stays with a person is one group of tasks, usually supplier relationships and choosing products. A few are skilled work such as teaching or legal hearings.