The First Fiscal Year of a company, the full story
In March last year, I did a blog post about how this company thing had been going, some 8 months into the whole process. Back then I mentioned that I couldn’t give you the full picture, since the first fiscal year hadn’t yet wrapped up, so who knew what else would await me until the end of 2025?
Well, it’s now May 2026, and last week I wrapped up the final accounts for the first fiscal year, so now I - literally and figuratively - have all the receipts. Let’s break it down!
To recap, let’s start at the beginning. Since Decaying Games started late July 2024, more than halfway through the year, I had a choice of doing my first year as a short or long “broken” year; do I end it as 2025 rolls around, or do I go until 2026? Seeing as I had enough on my mind with just making sure I did the running-a-company bits right, and I wouldn’t have a lot of different things happening those first few months, I chose the latter option.
With the lucky break I got, landing a consultant gig immediately and getting a surprise favorable short-term loan from a family member, I could start by filling up the coffers of the company. I had time to orient myself in the accounting software, and not be distracted from the work I was doing for my client.
And before I knew it, my loan was paid off, and the company had enough to allow myself to enlist the help of an accounting firm to check that my admin work was actually done correctly. Since I’m still doing the day-to-day accounting myself, it ended up becoming a quite reasonable amount to get that extra help.
Totalling up the quartely reviews, the fiscal-year-end reporting, and adding in assistance in completing some related tax documentation for both the company and myself, I spent around 30k SEK (roughly €2750) on accounting. Apart fom salary and some misc purchases, it’s probably the biggest running cost.
Being in the 21st century, the company needed a website and email to get things started. Those are both around 2000 SEK, yearly.
Company insurance, about the same: 2000 SEK.
Then the misc purchases have mostly been around various hardware, about 60k SEK total.
Add in a conference ticket and a test order of Decaying Games merch, roughly 10k SEK.
Let’s also not forget the startup costs; another 30k
And apart from salary (which will be so wildly different depending on the company that I’m not including it here), that’s it?
136k SEK in total to run Decaying Games the first fiscal year, almost 17 months, with 70k of it for things only relevant to this company’s specific needs.
I will note that the process has also been more managable for me due to being a “fåmansföretag” (translates to “few person company”) which a company can be if it consists of four or fewer people:
Apart from salary-related ones, taxes aren’t required to be registered montly. Instead I can send it in and add it to the books on a quarterly basis, and would’ve been able to do it yearly if I hadn’t reached a certain revenue tier. (a good problem to have!)
I don’t need a licensed accountant to do my final accounts, I can do them myself. (but I had the help of an accounting firm to at least check my work anyway)
And since the company structure involves just me, there’s less complexity in deciding what goes where. Plus, no transaction comes as a suprise; I’m involved for each of them!
Looking back on the workload of running the business myself, from initial concept to where I am now, the most confusing part to me is still making sure the accounting is done and registered into categories that make sense, so the tax registration is handled properly. For domestic purchases and invoices it’s fine, but the confusing part comes when a payment comes in or is registered outside of Sweden. It’s mostly due to a lack of experience with it on my part, but I have confused myself two or three times on which way and at what percentage the taxes should go! Each time I’ve been saved by the accounting firm checking and correcting my work though, so I’m super glad I was able to hire them sooner rather than later.
It’s still a bit frustrating when a company is seemingly located in one place, but then they suddenly have a subsidiary elsewhere that deals with the financial transaction, or even outsource the invoicing to a completely different company in an entirely unrelated country or region. (shakes fist at clouds)
Overall it’s still been pretty easy.
“But wait”, I hear you ask. “If the fiscal year ended after December 2025, why were the final accounts not done until May 2026?”
Short answer: Because a company has some time to compile everything before the final taxes and books are due to be reported to the government!
I could’ve waited for August at the latest, but declaring my private taxes was due in June (it’s usually May, but apparently if it’s handled through a firm you get an extension), and as a company owner, the company results could theoretically change those numbers (if I were to add or extract money from the company), so it was made in tandem. Plus the accounting firm was busy doing the final accounts for bigger clients with more complex results, so mine got pushed back a bit haha.
But that’s it really. No big surprises. Nothing that went wrong in any major way. The costs I had were expected and reasonable.
So how did the first fiscal year go?
Big profits!
Such big profits in fact, that I have been able to save up enough money in Decaying Games to be able to do something exciting:
I can now safely say that the first game project for Decaying Games will be fully bootstrapped, without outside investors, any grants, or funding from publishers. It’s all going to come from the company! From the people making the game! It’s not an infinite amount by any means, but it’s enough that I’m currently in the process of drafting contracts with some freelancers, to help us get ready for a proper game announcement later this year.
It’s almost time for the second chapter of Decaying Games, as I’m preparing to eventually shift from full-time consulting to full-time gamedev on the first internal title for the company. I’ll present more on that next time, but if you can’t wait, we are sharing early glimpses into the development process on our Discord, and will be ramping up more of that as we get further into the project.
But until next time: thank you for reading, and wishing you all the best,
DK
PS: this is not financial advice
