How to build a 90-day finance training plan for junior hires in UK startups

How to Train Junior Finance Staff in Startups: A 90-Day Plan

Hiring your first junior finance team member is a major milestone for any founder. You are finally getting dedicated help to manage the numbers, freeing you up to focus on growth. But a new challenge quickly emerges: how to train junior finance staff in startups? Without a CFO or a formal finance department, the responsibility for their development falls squarely on you. Founders often lack the time to design a startup-relevant curriculum, creating a risk that undertrained hires could misapply accounting or tax rules. This can lead to serious compliance issues and a loss of investor trust. A structured training plan is not a luxury; it is essential for turning a new hire into a valuable, long-term asset who can navigate the unique financial landscape of a growing company.

Foundational Understanding: The Three Tiers of Startup Finance Competency

Before you can build a training plan, you need to define what 'good' looks like. The reality for most pre-seed to Series B startups is more pragmatic than what is taught in textbooks. We see a clear progression across three tiers of competency that a junior hire must master to become truly effective. This framework provides a clear development path, which helps prevent the disengagement that often leads to costly team churn.

Tier 1: Transactional Integrity. This is the foundation. Can the new hire accurately record every financial event that occurs in the business? This tier focuses on meticulously processing invoices, reconciling bank accounts in Xero, and managing expense claims from tools like Pleo. The goal is a clean, reliable ledger where every number ties back to a real-world transaction, creating an accurate source of truth for all future reporting.

Tier 2: Reporting Reliability. With a clean ledger established, the focus shifts to creating trustworthy financial statements. This involves mastering the month-end close process, understanding the crucial distinction between when cash moves and when revenue or expenses are recognised, and applying core accounting standards. The output is a set of management accounts you can actually use to make decisions with confidence.

Tier 3: Strategic Support. This is where the role evolves from reactive bookkeeping to proactive financial management. The team member begins to analyse the reliable data they produce, providing insights through variance analysis, supporting budgeting, and helping to manage key business metrics. They move from simply producing data to helping the business understand what it means and how to act on it.

The Phased Learning Path: From Onboarding to Ownership

This three-tier framework maps directly onto a 90-day onboarding plan. By structuring their learning journey in phases, you provide clear goals and measurable progress. This approach systematically builds their skills, ensuring they master the fundamentals before moving on to more complex, value-added tasks. This structured approach to upskilling entry-level finance staff is crucial for building a capable team.

Phase 1: The First 30 Days – Building Transactional Integrity (Tier 1)

The primary goal for the first month is to get your new hire safely up to speed on your specific systems and daily processes. This phase is all about achieving Transactional Integrity. The most effective training method here is 'I do, we do, you do.' First, you demonstrate the task. Next, you do it together, letting them take the lead while you guide. Finally, they do it independently. Use online modules where available to provide structured practice and reinforce concepts.

Key processes to cover during this initial onboarding for finance team members include:

• Bank and Credit Card Reconciliations: Start here. This is the best way for a new hire to understand the flow of cash and the types of expenses the business incurs. Have them match transactions in your accounting software, like Xero or QuickBooks, to the bank and card statements. Emphasise using tools like Dext or Hubdoc to automate receipt capture, ensuring every transaction has supporting documentation for a clean audit trail.
• Accounts Payable (AP): Teach them the end-to-end process for paying suppliers. This includes receiving an invoice, getting the correct internal approval, entering it into the accounting system with the right expense code, and scheduling the payment. This process is critical for managing cash flow and maintaining good supplier relationships.
• Accounts Receivable (AR): Show them how you invoice clients and chase payments. For a SaaS company, this involves understanding how subscriptions in payment platforms like Stripe or GoCardless feed into Xero. For a professional services firm, it is more about tracking billable hours and issuing project-based invoices accurately and on time.
• Payroll Journals: Explain how to take the payroll summary each month and turn it into a journal entry. This involves correctly allocating gross salary costs, employer taxes, pension contributions, and net pay. It is a recurring, non-negotiable task that must be done with precision to ensure your records are accurate and your team is paid correctly.

By day 30, your junior hire should be able to handle these daily and weekly tasks with minimal supervision, ensuring the basic financial data of the company is clean and up to date.

Phase 2: Days 30-90 – Mastering the Month-End Close (Tier 2)

With daily processing under control, the focus shifts to producing reliable reports, moving the junior hire into Tier 2. This is where you teach them to produce management accounts you can trust. The month-end close is the central process for achieving this. It is the practical application of accounting theory that turns a month's worth of transactions into a clear financial picture.

Core concepts to teach during this phase of junior accountant development include:

• Accruals and Prepayments: This is a critical concept for startups. Explain the difference between accounting for an expense when it is paid versus when the benefit is received. For example, an annual software subscription of £1,200 paid in January is a prepayment; you recognise one-twelfth of the cost (£100) each month. An accrual is the opposite, like accounting for legal fees incurred in March but not invoiced until April.
• Revenue Recognition: Teach the difference between receiving cash and earning revenue. This is vital for SaaS startups, which must understand the concept of Deferred Revenue. This represents revenue that has been billed but not yet earned. An annual contract billed upfront is not recognised as revenue all at once; it is earned monthly over the life of the contract.
• Balance Sheet Reconciliations: Go beyond the bank reconciliation. Show them how to verify other key balance sheet accounts, such as the fixed asset register, accounts receivable ageing reports, and payroll liability accounts. This ensures the numbers are accurate and the balance sheet presents a true and fair view of the company's financial position.
• Applying Accounting Standards: Introduce the relevant standards in a practical context. In day-to-day finance operations, what actually happens is that UK-based startups typically follow FRS 102, the primary Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK. Some may use IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) if they have international ambitions, while companies with a US presence must be familiar with US GAAP, the accounting standards used in the U.S.

To provide structure, give them a simple checklist. A scenario we repeatedly see is that a checklist demystifies the process for junior staff and ensures consistency month after month.

Example Month-End Close Checklist:

Days 1-2: Transactional Wrap-Up

• [ ] Finalise all bank and credit card reconciliations for the period.
• [ ] Ensure all supplier invoices for the month are entered into the system.
• [ ] Post the monthly payroll journal from the payroll summary.

Days 3-4: Adjusting Entries

• [ ] Post accrual and prepayment journals for relevant expenses.
• [ ] Reconcile the deferred revenue schedule (especially for SaaS businesses).
• [ ] Run the depreciation schedule for fixed assets and post the journal.

Day 5: Final Review and Reporting

• [ ] Reconcile all key balance sheet accounts (debtors, creditors, etc.).
• [ ] Close the accounting period in Xero or QuickBooks to prevent further changes.
• [ ] Produce the first draft of the Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement.

By the end of this phase, your junior hire should be capable of running the month-end close process independently and producing a reliable set of management accounts.

Phase 3: Beyond 90 Days – From Reporting to Insight (Tier 3)

With reliable reporting in place, the role can grow and continue adding value. The final phase is about elevating your team member to Tier 3, where they transition from producing financial data to providing business insight. This is where they become a true strategic partner, helping you understand the numbers behind your business performance.

Key activities in this ongoing phase include:

• Variance Analysis (Actuals vs. Budget): This is the first step towards strategic support. Teach them to compare the actual results from the management accounts to the budget. What founders find actually works is establishing a clear threshold for investigation. A common starting point is a variance analysis threshold of >10%. Do not just ask them to identify the variances; teach them to investigate *why* they happened and write a concise commentary. A useful comment is not just "Marketing spend was 15% over budget." A better comment is: *"Marketing spend was £3k (15%) over budget due to an unplanned content campaign launched mid-month. This contributed to a 20% increase in new leads, exceeding the 12% target."*
• Introduction to Business Metrics: Connect the accounting numbers to the metrics that drive the business. For an E-commerce company, this could be calculating customer acquisition cost (CAC) or gross margin per product line. For a Biotech startup, it is about meticulously tracking R&D spend against grant budgets. For a SaaS business, this means tracking key performance indicators like Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) and customer churn.
• Evolving Compliance Duties: As the company grows, so do its compliance obligations. This is the time for regulatory training for finance staff. Introduce them to transactional taxes like VAT/Sales Tax. In the UK, this involves understanding Making Tax Digital requirements for VAT filing. For R&D-heavy Biotech and Deeptech companies, this means understanding concepts like R&D Capitalisation and the specifics of the HMRC R&D Scheme for tax relief. For companies with US operations, it requires knowledge of the U.S. tax code, such as Section 174, which governs the tax treatment of R&D expenditures.

This phase is ongoing. By giving them the skills to analyse, question, and report on the 'why' behind the numbers, you transform their role from a cost centre into a source of valuable business intelligence.

Practical Takeaways for Your Finance Training Plan

Building a robust finance function starts with a single, well-trained hire. Without a clear development path, junior team members can stagnate, leading to errors and high turnover just when you need stability. The key is to provide a structured journey that builds competence and confidence over time. A solid onboarding for finance team members is your best defence against these risks.

The three-tier framework, Transactional Integrity, Reporting Reliability, and Strategic Support, gives you a clear definition of success. Mapping this to a phased 30-60-90 day plan makes the finance training for startups manageable and measurable for both you and your new hire. Start with the daily mechanics in your accounting software, progress to the discipline of the month-end close, and finally, guide them to provide the insights that help you steer the business.

This investment in upskilling entry-level finance staff does more than just ensure accurate books. It builds a loyal, capable team member who understands your business deeply and can grow alongside it. This mitigates compliance risks and helps them become a crucial part of your company's success. As they develop, targeted cash management training is a core next step, supporting forecasting and daily operations. Continue their development at the Finance Team Upskilling hub.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the biggest mistake founders make when training junior finance staff?
A: The most common mistake is providing no structure. Founders often assume a new hire understands the unique context of a startup's finances. Without a clear plan, hires are left to figure things out, which can lead to inconsistent processes, errors in financial data, and increased compliance risk.

Q: What are the essential tools for a junior finance role in a UK startup?
A: At a minimum, they need proficiency in cloud accounting software like Xero. They should also be comfortable with tools for expense management (like Pleo or Soldo) and automated receipt capture (like Dext or Hubdoc). As the company grows, familiarity with your payroll software and payment platforms like Stripe is also essential.

Q: How do I know when my junior hire is ready for more strategic tasks?
A: The key indicator is their ability to run the month-end close process independently and produce reliable reports with minimal errors. When they start asking insightful questions about the numbers, such as questioning why a certain cost has increased, it shows they are ready to move beyond reporting and into analysis (Tier 3).

Q: Should a junior hire be involved in investor reporting?
A: Initially, their role should be to provide the clean, accurate data that underpins investor reports. They should not be responsible for creating the reports or communicating with investors. As they progress to Tier 3 and develop a deep understanding of business metrics, they can begin to assist in preparing the analysis for these reports.