> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://www.twicecommerce.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Before you start

> The decisions to settle before you configure anything — who owns the launch, when it lands, and where your data comes from.

Step 1 of the [launch path](/docs/guides/launch/overview). Nothing here is a click in the admin. These are five decisions, and everything after them depends on the answers — each one cheap now and expensive to revisit in week six.

## Who owns the launch

One named person on your side, not a department. They hold the date, they answer the questions that come back, and they decide when something is good enough to go live. Everyone else contributes a part.

The absence of that one name is the most reliable predictor of a launch that stalls.

## When it lands, and what season it lands in

Pick the date, then look at it honestly against your busiest weeks. Going live in the middle of your peak means learning a new system while you are least able to. If your business has a season, launch before it starts.

Then work backwards: staff training about two weeks before go-live, and the pre-launch check about two weeks before that — so anything it finds is fixable without moving the date.

## Start the payment application now

This is the one step you cannot compress at the end, because approval is not in TWICE's hands. A new payment provider account means company documents, beneficial-owner identity and bank details, then someone else's review on someone else's clock.

Started now it is invisible. Left until you need it, it is the thing your launch waits on, with no way to buy the time back — which is why [Connect payments](/docs/guides/launch/make-it-sellable) is the very next step. See [Payments](/docs/settings/payments).

## Where your data comes from

Three honest answers, and they lead to different work in [Bring in your data](/docs/guides/launch/bring-in-inventory-and-catalog): you are coming from **TWICE 1.0**, from a **spreadsheet or another system**, or you are **starting fresh**. Pick one before you import anything — mixing two sources halfway through is how duplicates happen.

Decide at the same time how long your old system stays readable. Deposits and rentals that are already out have to settle somewhere, and the old system usually has to stay open for reading long after it stops taking bookings.

Worth reading first: [stock items and SKUs](/docs/inventory/stock-item-vs-sku), because the words do not mean what they meant in 1.0, and the [glossary](/docs/concepts/glossary).

## Which plan

Your plan sets what the account can do and how locations are billed. Settle it early — a couple of later steps depend on capabilities that are tier-gated, and what counts as a billable location is not always what people assume.

<Note>
  A guide for plan entitlements — what counts as a location, what is included, what is billable — is in progress. Until it lands, see [TWICE Commerce overview](/docs/twice-commerce-overview) and [Subscription](/docs/settings/subscription).
</Note>

## Related articles

<CardGroup cols={2} className="doc-rows-condensed">
  <Card title="Launch path" href="/docs/guides/launch/overview">
    The whole path, in order.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Set up your business" href="/docs/guides/launch/set-up-the-foundation">
    The next step: the configuration everything else sits on.
  </Card>

  <Card title="The TWICE approach" href="/docs/concepts/os-approach">
    How the system is modelled.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>