Your first week on the counter, nobody expects you to know everything. The shop owner does not expect it, your manager does not expect it, and the IOI who pulls your transactions two years from now will not care that you were new. What that inspector cares about is whether the paperwork holds up. A handful of mistakes a new hire makes on a busy Saturday are the same mistakes that turn into findings, and a pattern of findings is what turns into administrative action against the license you did not even sign for.
So here is the short list. Not everything you will eventually need to know, just the things you cannot get wrong while you are still learning the rest.
Finish the 4473. All of it.
The single most common inspection finding is an incomplete Form 4473 (ATF Form 5300.9). Not fraud, not anything dramatic. A blank in Section A, a question the buyer skipped, a box you forgot to check, a missing signature or date. Each blank is its own finding, and the recordkeeping requirements at 27 CFR § § 478.124–478.129 do not grade on effort.
Before the buyer walks away, look at the whole form, not just the part you filled in:
- Every question in the buyer's section answered, no blanks.
- Buyer signature and date present, and the date is the day they certified.
- Your sections complete: the firearm description, the NICS information, your signature and date.
The form is not done until it is done. "We were slammed" is not a defense in an exit interview. Confirm the current form and its instructions against the ATF source, because the 4473 gets revised, and an old edition is its own problem.
Treat the NICS clock like it matters, because it does.
The background check requirement lives at 18 U.S.C. § 922(t). When you get a delay, you do not get to guess about when you may transfer. The default-proceed window is three business days under § 922(t)(1)(B)(ii), and business days exclude Saturdays, Sundays, and federal holidays. Counting weekends into that clock is how a lawful early transfer becomes an unlawful one.
If you are not certain a transfer is clear to proceed, you ask. Every time, your first week.
Never guess your way through a straw purchase.
This is the one where the stakes jump from paperwork to a federal statute. The actual-buyer rule comes from Abramski v. United States, 573 U.S. 169 (2014): the person filling out the 4473 has to be the actual buyer. A true gift bought with the buyer's own money is lawful. A purchase that is funded or directed by someone else is not, and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 added federal straw-purchase and trafficking statutes at 18 U.S.C. § § 932 and 933.
You will see the indicators sooner than you think. The buyer who keeps glancing at someone else. The companion picking the gun and counting the cash. The answer that changes when you ask who it is for. You do not need to play detective, and you do not need to accuse anyone. You need to recognize the signal and know the words that stop the sale without escalating it. That is a learnable skill, not a personality trait, and Straw Purchase Recognition exists to teach you the definition, the behavioral cues, and a refusal script that keeps the sale lawful and you safe.
Hand over the YHSA notice with every handgun.
The Youth Handgun Safety Act lives at 18 U.S.C. § 922(x), and the dealer piece is at 27 CFR § 478.103. Two parts you cannot skip: the prescribed notice has to be conspicuously posted in the shop, and it has to go out with every handgun transfer to a non-licensee. It is easy, it is free, and forgetting it is a finding anyway. Make it part of the motion of bagging the handgun so you never have to remember it.
Know which gun can leave the state, and which cannot.
First-week buyers will ask about out-of-state sales, and the rule is not intuitive. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(3), a handgun sold to a non-licensee from another state routes FFL-to-FFL to a dealer in the buyer's state of residence. You do not hand it across the counter to an out-of-state resident. A long gun can go over the counter if the sale is lawful in both states. When you are unsure which bucket a transaction falls into, the safe move is to stop and check, not to improvise.
When you do not know, say so.
This is the real first-week skill. The mistakes that cost licenses are almost never made by people who asked a question. They are made by people who guessed to keep the line moving. "Let me check" is always the right answer your first week, and your manager would rather hear it than read it in a finding report later.
Get the credential, not just the conversation
Most new hires learn the counter by watching whoever trained before them, which means the same gaps get passed down with the good habits. DealerReady's own review of FFL claims points the same direction: the large majority trace back to documented counter or recordkeeping errors, not to bad actors. Turnover at the counter is where those errors enter, and onboarding that is a dated certificate instead of a hallway conversation is the lever that closes the gap.
The 4473 Completion & Recordkeeping course walks the form line by line, including corrections and NICS handling, and it is the right place for a new hire to start. If you are bringing someone onto the sales floor for real, Counter Certified stacks the courses that map to the job, and every one they finish produces a dated certificate your carrier can verify by ID.
None of this is legal advice, and it is not a substitute for the current ATF forms, instructions, and rulings. Confirm specifics against the ATF source, and bring in counsel where the stakes warrant it. What training gives you is the baseline and the paper trail. Documented beats discussed, every time.
Browse the course catalog to see where a new hire should start, or look at shop plans when the answer is training the whole counter and proving it to your carrier.