what are the checklist items a new business person needs to check off when setting up their bookkeeping?

I ran a family small business for nearly 30 years. My advise is to contact a CPA who does small business activities such as payroll, payroll taxes, inventory, reciepts, expenses, depreciation. It is also important that this person also knows some of the special state items that vary from state to state. If you are somewhat detail oriented, you do not need to have an accountant do the book entries. There are very good accounting software packages, BUT an accountant will advise you what to post to the books. This is expecially useful for tax records and preparation--lots of pitfall in this area if you do not get some coaching from an accountant who does small business tax returns. You may want to set up a fee for info/calls with the CPA instead of retainer. We always did our books posting ourselves and had the CPA review them at least yearly and then he would prepare the taxes for us form the accounts that he told us to post into. All accountants prefer spend some time with a client to set up the accounts needed for tax planning, rather than try to redo the books into the accounts need to prepare the tax return. If you have employees, you may want a CPA to do the payroll, payroll taxes, withholding etc. the FEDs and States have NO tolerance for boo-boos or omissions in this area. Good luck, your own small business can be the most rewarding of ventures.