Holiday handover checklist for small teams

Why a handover beats an out-of-office reply

The Christmas break is the one time of year when most of a small team is away at once. An out-of-office reply tells people you're gone; it doesn't tell your colleagues what's waiting, what's urgent or who to ask. The result is familiar: a client question nobody can answer, a deploy nobody dares to touch, and a first week back spent rebuilding where everything was.

A handover fixes that with three things written down before you leave: what is in progress, what could go wrong while you're away, and what happens first when you come back. It takes an hour, and it's the hour that lets you actually switch off.

What a good handover note contains

Keep it short enough to read in five minutes. For each person leaving, list:

In progress: each piece of work, where it stands, and the next step.
Waiting on others: answers, approvals or deliveries expected while you're away, and what to do when they arrive.
Could go wrong: the two or three things most likely to need attention, with how to handle them or who can decide.
Contacts: who covers for you, and when (if ever) you can be reached.
Where things are: links to the documents, tickets and accounts someone would need.
Back on: your return date and the first things you'll pick up.

Write facts, not a diary: "Invoice sent to the client on the 18th, payment due on the 2nd" is more useful than the whole story of the project.

Write it in Documents

On the Pro plan, Documents is the natural home for the handover, because everyone in your team sees and edits the same library. If you're new to it, the Documents guide covers the basics.

Press New document and give it a clear title, such as "Holiday handover December", so it's easy to find.
Use one heading per person, with the sections from the list above underneath. The live preview shows the result as you type, and it saves by itself.
Add a flag such as "handover" with Add flag, so next year's note sits next to this one.
Before you leave, press Done editing and read it once in reading mode, as your colleague will.

Better still, keep last year's note as a template: copy its structure into the new one and fill it in, rather than starting from a blank page every December.

Bring the Needs board up to date

If your team tracks work on the Needs board (Pro plan), it's the quickest way for whoever covers to see where each project stands:

Move every card to its real stage. A card left in "Dev" for something that's waiting on the client sends the wrong signal.
Add a note to the activity of anything that's in progress: "Waiting for the client's feedback on the mock-up, expected on the 4th".
Check the business owner is set, so questions go to the right person while you're away.
Mention the handover document in a note on the cards where it matters, so whoever opens the card knows where to look.

The Needs guide explains stages, activity and filters in detail.

Clear your own task list

Your tasks are personal, so nobody else will see them while you're away. Use that to leave a clean list behind:

Finish or delete the small tasks that no longer matter. A short list is easier to come back to.
For anything a colleague should take over, filter your list by the right flag and use Export undone tasks as text. It copies the tasks you can see to your clipboard, ready to paste into the handover document or a message.
Add a "handover" flag to the tasks you've passed on, so you can check on them when you're back.
Add your first-day-back tasks before you leave: "Read the handover replies", "Check the client inbox", "Restart the weekly review". Whatever you haven't done stays on your list and shows up as a late task when you open Tasks again.

Routines with a recurrence keep coming back on their own, so you don't lose your weekly or monthly habits over the break. The Tasks guide covers recurrence, flags and the daily email.

Tell clients and set expectations

Send clients your dates a week or two ahead, with what happens to urgent requests and who to contact.
Agree on what "urgent" means: a site down is urgent, a new feature request can wait until January.
Set your out-of-office reply with the same information, and the date you're back.

For the admin side of the end of the year, such as last invoices and renewals, see the year-end checklist.

Tips

Hand over two days early. Your colleague can ask questions while you're still there.
Walk through it together for ten minutes, rather than just sending a link.
Name one decision-maker for each client or project, so nobody waits for an answer that can't come.
On your first morning back, read the handover document before your inbox: your colleagues may have added what happened.