You’d start from the very basic thing – writing down your main transactions and how you account for them. Before making any entries you should keep a clear description of how exactly they are to be done.  

To ensure accurate and proper accounting the very basic ground rules need to be clear, concise and followed at all times. Now those rules is something you should think through thoroughly and write down in such a manner they’re easily to be followed and reasonable. There’s no need to make unnecessary rules that are too complicated or too excessive to follow.

Another thing you need to consider is where you’re going to keep record of your accounts – is it going to be on paper or in some form of software.

Accounting in software is the easiest option – normally the accounting software is meant for the most basic entries as a bare minimum and includes referencing system to source documents amongst other very basic things. Accounting on paper is trickier however – trickier in the sense that human errors are so easy to drop in and what’s more, one can easily damage the information written on paper. Now, keeping records electronically isn’t obviously all that safe either, but far more so than keeping record of all your transactions on paper.

So your first two things – where and what exactly are you going to account for.