The Owner Pay System
Set a fixed owner draw, a payday schedule and a cushion rule, so your pay stops depending on how the month felt.
Published Sep 12, 2026
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By the end of this, you'll have four written numbers: a planning revenue number, a tax holdback percentage, a fixed draw amount, and a cushion floor. You'll have two dates on the calendar when money moves from the business account to your personal account, the same amount every time. You'll also have a rule that tells you, in advance, what to do in a month that comes in short — so you're not making that call at 11pm with your banking app open.
Set aside about two hours for the setup. Most of it is reading bank statements, not math.
1. Find your planning number from the last 90 days
Open your business checking account online and filter to deposits only for the last three full calendar months. Most banks let you do this with a transaction search — set the date range, set type to "credit" or "deposit," and export to CSV if the option is there.
That is where the free part ends.
The rest walks the whole thing through, step by step — including the parts people get wrong and what to do when the normal route fails.