Sometime in your first week as the first ops hire, someone will ask when the domain renews. Four people will each assume another one knows. The answer turns out to be in the inbox of a contractor who left in March. That's the job you just took: a company's recurring work, held together by memory.
Don't start by shopping. Spend a week finding out what actually happens, because the audit usually changes what you'd buy. This page gives you the audit table to copy, shows how to read it, and then maps it onto Nautis and the specialist tools you'd likely keep. Nautis for startup operators covers the wider role, including tool cuts and your plan.
Run the audit in five days
You'll get further with short conversations than with a survey. Keep it light, since nobody should feel they're being inspected.
- Day 1: pull the money. Export 12 months of card and bank transactions. Every recurring charge is a process or a subscription with an owner somewhere. This list is usually longer than anyone expects.
- Day 2: read the calendar and inbox trails. Ask each founder for the last three things that went wrong operationally. Those failures point straight at the weak processes.
- Day 3: talk to whoever does the work. Ask each person, "What do you do every month that would break if you were on holiday?"
- Day 4: fill in the table below. Write what actually happens, even if it's embarrassing. "Priya remembers" is a valid entry under System.
- Day 5: rank and share. Show the founders the three worst gaps and your proposed fix. Don't propose new software yet unless a gap truly requires it.
The startup ops audit table to copy
Copy these rows into a sheet, then add the ones specific to your company, such as licences or customer data requests. The owner column is the one that matters. It must hold one name, and "finance" or "everyone" doesn't count.
| Process | Typical owner | Frequency | System to record | How you'll know it's broken |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pay run | Ops lead, approved by a founder | Monthly | Your payroll provider, and where the pay records live | Someone asks whether they've been paid. A joiner's first salary is wrong |
| Customer invoices | Ops or finance | Monthly and on milestones | Invoicing tool and its overdue list | Nobody can say what's overdue without opening a spreadsheet |
| Vendor renewals | Ops lead | Monthly check, annual events | A list with renewal date, notice period and owner | An annual contract renews after someone had meant to cancel it |
| Access and credentials | Ops or engineering lead | On every join and exit, reviewed quarterly | Password manager with named shares | A shared password sits in chat. A leaver still has a login |
| Onboarding | Hiring manager, run by ops | Each hire | A checklist copied per person | A new hire waits two days for a laptop or an account |
| Offboarding | Ops lead | Each exit | The same checklist, reversed | Nobody can list what the person had access to |
| Expense review | Ops, with a founder above a set amount | Weekly or monthly | Expense tool with receipts | Receipts arrive by chat at the end of the quarter |
| Month-end handoff | Ops, to your accountant | Monthly | A shared checklist | The accountant emails three times asking for the same statement |
Reading the audit: three findings that matter
Most audits turn up the same three problems. Tackle them in this order, because each one costs less to fix than the next.
- Nobody owns it. Fix it today, with a name in the table. It costs nothing and removes most of the risk. Software won't help, as an unowned process in a new tool is still unowned.
- A founder owns it. Common and expensive, because a founder's hour is worth more than yours and they'll skip it during a raise. Move these to you, and leave the founder an approval step for amounts above a set limit.
- The system is a person's memory or inbox. This is where software starts to pay. A recurring job needs a place that reminds someone without being asked.
Rank what's left by cost of failure, multiplied by how often it happens. A missed pay run is rare and very costly. An unfiled receipt is frequent and cheap. As an illustration, suppose a forgotten $6,000 annual renewal happens once a year, and expense chasing takes you three hours a month. Both deserve a fix, and the renewal list takes an afternoon to build.
What a startup operations platform should do
Once the audit is done, your requirements will be specific. Most ops teams end up with something close to this list. Score any product against it during a trial, using your own processes.
- Reminds you before the deadline. A list you have to remember to check doesn't solve the memory problem.
- Separates sensitive data by role. The person logging expenses shouldn't be able to read salaries.
- Shows who did what. You'll be asked after an incident, and an audit log answers faster than asking around.
- Handles joiners and leavers as an event. Access should change in one place, and you shouldn't need to walk through 20 admin panels.
- Lets you take the data out. Your accountant and auditors will want files, and you may move one day.
Where Nautis fits, process by process
Here's the audit against what the Nautis guides document. Some rows are a good fit, others only partly, and we've marked the gaps plainly.
| Process | Nautis module | What it does | Where it stops |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay run | Employee management | Compensation revisions, payroll cycles and payouts. Process marks a run as paid, with salary slips and leave | Doesn't move money or file statutory payroll. You still need a payroll provider for those |
| Customer invoices | Invoices | PDF invoices, recurring invoices, credit notes, overdue badges, aging analysis | Payment is collected outside Nautis and recorded by hand. Reminders aren't automatic, though an overdue invoice can surface in the Briefing with a Do it action |
| Vendor renewals | Expenses | Recurring expenses create an entry each cycle, and budgets track spend against category | The guides describe no renewal notice alert. Keep notice dates as tasks with due dates on a Task board |
| Access and credentials | Credentials vault | Encrypted storage, named Shared Access, folders, imports from 1Password, Bitwarden and LastPass. Exports are audit-logged | Stores secrets inside Nautis. It isn't described as single sign-on, so it won't switch off a leaver's outside accounts |
| Onboarding | Jobs and recruitment, Task boards | Convert to employee fills in the record when a candidate is hired. Duplicate a board as your per-person checklist | No bulk import of employees. Laptops and accounts remain your job |
| Expense review | Expenses | Scan a Bill, Approval Rules by amount or category, Policy Rules that warn or block, CSV export | It isn't accounting software. Your accountant still does the books |
Two habits make this hold together. A Routine can run monthly on a set day and report to you, and the Briefing puts overdue invoices and pending approvals in one morning list. Nautis's Startup Health adds a monthly check-in of cash, recurring revenue and burn for runway.
Specialist tools you may keep anyway
A good operator doesn't force everything into one tool. Here's what's published for three common choices, as of November 2026. Prices are from each vendor's own page. We couldn't read Gusto's pricing page today, as it refused our request, so we state no price for it. Ask them directly if you're in a country it serves.
| Job | Tool | Published price | Choose it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company cards and bills | Ramp | $0 per user, or Plus at $15 per user plus a platform fee | You want card controls and bill pay, which the Nautis guides don't describe |
| Passwords for a small team | 1Password | Teams Starter Pack $24.95 a month for 10 members. Business $8.99 per user a month. Both billed yearly | You want a dedicated password manager for the whole team |
| Passwords on a budget | Bitwarden | Teams $4 per user a month, Enterprise $6, billed annually | Price matters most |
| Payroll provider | Gusto, or a local provider | Couldn't confirm | You need money moved and statutory filings handled |
Keep your accountant whichever way you go. Consolidating the rest may be worthwhile, and the tool consolidation playbook shows how to cut without breaking work. Don't move the systems your auditors or payroll depend on until the small ones have gone smoothly.
Worked example: one person joins, one leaves
Joiners and leavers expose every weakness at once, so test any setup against them. Here's how the two checklists might run in Nautis. Nothing below is automatic unless we say so.
Priya joins as a designer
- Drag her to Hired in Jobs and recruitment, and accept Convert to employee. Her record lands in Employee management with her details filled in.
- Add her compensation as a revision, so the history starts clean, and invite her with a role that fits, perhaps a custom one.
- Duplicate your onboarding Task board, rename it for her, and assign the steps to the right people.
- Add her to Shared Access on only the credentials she needs. Everything else stays hidden from her.
Sam leaves after two years
- Set an Exit date on the record instead of deleting it, so payroll and reports stay accurate.
- Choose Remove Member. Access ends at once, and what Sam created stays in the organization.
- Rotate every secret Sam could see. Removing a member cuts vault access but doesn't change the passwords Sam already read.
- Check who a Routine runs as. If it ran as Sam, it pauses until an Owner or Admin clicks Run as me and resume.
The list of Sam's outside accounts, such as the cloud console, the code host and the design tool, is still yours to work through. That's the argument for an identity provider once you pass a few dozen accounts, and it's a job Nautis doesn't claim to do.
When Nautis is the wrong tool for this job
- You have many locations, entities or stock. You need an ERP, so read business OS vs ERP vs project management.
- You're past 25 people. The published plans stop there, and operations software for established teams may fit better.
- Your main pain is payroll compliance. Buy a payroll provider, since Nautis doesn't file statutory payroll or move money.
- You won't be an admin. Only Owners and Admins can decide agent approvals, add routines and connect apps, so ask for that role before you commit.
FAQ
What is a startup operations platform?
It's software that holds a company's recurring back-office processes, such as invoices, expense review, access and onboarding, in one place with owners and reminders. No product covers everything. Most startups pair one with a payroll provider and an accountant.
What should a first ops hire do in their first week?
Run an audit. List each recurring process with its owner, frequency and system, using a year of bank and card transactions and short talks with whoever does the work. Then fix the gaps in ownership before you buy any software.
Does Nautis run payroll?
It tracks pay cycles, payouts and salary slips, and Process marks a run as paid. It doesn't move money or handle statutory payroll filings, so companies still need a payroll provider for those parts.
Is the Nautis Credentials vault a replacement for a password manager?
It can be for a small team that wants stored secrets, folders and named sharing inside the workspace, and values are encrypted with AES-256. The guide doesn't describe browser autofill or single sign-on. If your team wants those, keep a dedicated password manager.
What's the first process to fix in startup operations?
Fix whichever has no named owner and the highest cost when it fails. That's often vendor renewals or offboarding, because they fail quietly and the bill arrives later. A named owner and a simple dated list cost nothing and solve most of the risk.