This is so much easier with the trasmitter in hand, but here goes:

Do normal flight trim.
Pull vertical and go straight up, if it pulls to the left, add right thrust. You must do this first, do not try to trim it out in rudder, or you plane may never hover well.
Try positive and negitive snaps to look for bad traits.
Knife edge flight to see if its going to pull or push, or what ever. May make mixing ajustments, however now I just fly it that way. Most don't need much.
Inverted flat spin to see if I have enough deflection. Planes should invert flatspin with enough deflection, doesn't need to be very tail heavy.
Hover. If the nose drops out easy, add tail weight until satified, then move battery for balance and eleminate weight.
Do a parachute to see if a wing drops, and to see if the horizontal stab is going to eject.

This takes several flights and make ajustments every flight. This may take 10-20 or more flights. Look at different amounts of deflection, expo, spoilerons, flaperons and the percentage of those. Also look into props, those can make a big difference.

Just play with it. You should not do anything that would make the plane much more difficult to land. Make small changes and several flights.