Client handover template

A client handover is one row per thing that has to move: an account, an asset, a data export, a document, an access right, a relationship, an obligation. Each row says where it actually lives, who could reach it before and who can reach it after, whether ownership moved or only access, and who on the receiving side confirmed it.

The verification column is what makes it a handover rather than a list. An item ticked by the person leaving is a claim; an item confirmed by the person arriving is a fact.

Use it whenever an account changes hands: an agency changing, a person leaving, a client moving in-house, a business being sold. Start it weeks before the date rather than in the final week, because the items that take longest are the ones nobody controls.

Use it also as a standing document. A handover list kept current is the fastest disaster recovery plan an account has.

The instinct in a handover is to write a summary: here is the strategy, here is what we did, here is what we recommend. That document is worth having and it is not a handover.

A handover is an inventory. One row per thing that has to move, named exactly, with where it actually lives and who can reach it afterwards. The summary explains; the inventory is what keeps the account running on the Monday after everybody has gone.

The single column that makes it work is the verification. An item ticked by the person leaving means they believe it is done. An item confirmed by the person arriving means it is. The gap between those two is where most handovers fail, and it is not usually bad faith — permissions look granted and are unusable, roles are wrong, invitations are never accepted.

Working by category rather than by memory is what stops a handover missing an entire kind of thing.

Seven cover most cases. Accounts: the ad accounts, the business accounts, the analytics properties. Assets: creative files, the source files, the library. Data: exports, historical reporting, audience lists where they can lawfully move. Documents: plans, briefs, conventions, audits, the reasons. Access rights: who can administer what. Relationships: suppliers, platform representatives, the person at the printer. Obligations: contracts with notice periods, commitments already made, campaigns already booked.

Almost every painful handover fails on one of the last four, because those are the ones that never appear on an invoice.

The most expensive error available in a handover is confusing the two.

Access granted from an agency's own account survives only as long as that account does. When it is closed — and it will be, eventually — everything that depended on it disappears, including the ad account's history, the audiences built inside it, and the verifications attached to it.

So the column asks explicitly whether ownership moved. Where it did not, and where it should have, that is an outstanding item with a real risk line beside it. The fix is usually a platform process that takes days and cannot be rushed at the end, which is why this belongs at the start of the list rather than in the final week.

Accounts are remembered because they are visible. What gets lost is everything configured around them.

Tracking configurations and the rules behind them. Automated rules still running, which will keep running after the handover, under nobody's authority, doing whatever they were built to do. Saved audiences and the definitions behind them. Scheduled reports going to people who have left. Domain and pixel verifications. Templates, naming conventions, the shared spreadsheets everything depends on.

Each of those is one row. Automated rules deserve particular attention: an unnoticed rule is authority nobody holds, acting on an account nobody is watching.

The notes column is the part that cannot be recovered afterwards.

An account's structure usually encodes decisions: why two campaigns exist that look like duplicates, why a segment is excluded, why the naming changed halfway through last year, why a channel was tried and stopped. From the outside all of that looks like untidiness, and the successor's first instinct will be to clean it up.

Write the reasons down. It is the only part of a handover that has no substitute, and it is the difference between a successor who starts from where you got to and one who repeats two years of learning.

The items that take longest are the ones neither side controls.

Transferring ownership of an account through a platform's process. A supplier's notice period. A verification that requires a document somebody has to find. A data export that has to be requested and then waited for. A contract that has to be read by someone who is on leave.

None of those can be compressed in the final week, and all of them are predictable. Sorting the list by risk and starting the queued items first is what makes the last week about confirmation rather than about panic.

A handover that leaves a single person able to reach something has replaced one risk with another.

For everything the business depends on, the access-after column should name at least two current people. This is usually resisted on the receiving side, because it looks like unnecessary administration during a busy transition, and it is the thing that matters most six months later when somebody is unavailable.

One category needs care rather than speed: the data.

Historical reporting can usually be exported and handed over without difficulty, and it should be, because a successor with no history cannot tell an ordinary quiet month from a problem. Creative and source files are the client's in most arrangements, and the source files matter more than the exports.

Audience lists are the case that needs thought. Where a list was built from a client's own customer data it belongs to the client; where it was assembled inside a platform from behaviour, it often cannot move at all, and the honest entry is a row saying so with the reason. Writing that down prevents the successor spending a fortnight looking for something that does not transfer.

Seven checks. Items are listed by category, and every one is named with its identifier. Every row has been verified by somebody on the receiving side, with a date. Ownership transferred is distinguished from access granted, and everything that should have moved has moved. Automated rules and scheduled reports have been listed and either transferred or stopped. Nothing the business depends on can be reached by only one person. Every row carries a risk-if-missed line. And the notes explain the reasons behind the account's structure, not only its contents.