A one-page handover document
A checklist for the document your contacts should be able to find. Keep the document itself somewhere they can reach (a shared folder, a printed copy, your lawyer), and keep passwords in a password manager that has an emergency-access feature, not in the document or in a Handover Switch message.
1. Who to call first
- The one person who decides things if you can't (partner, co-founder, trusted friend).
- Your accountant, lawyer and bank contact, if you have them.
- A technical person who can log in to your hosting if needed.
2. What is running and who depends on it
- Each client: what you do for them, what of theirs runs through your accounts (sites, domains, hosting, email), and how to reach them.
- Your own products: apps, sites, subscriptions with paying users.
- Anything that breaks loudly if it stops: a server, a scheduled job, a support inbox.
3. Accounts, by name only
- List each account (registrar, hosting, app stores, Stripe or other payments, bank, email, password manager) and whose name it is in.
- For each: is there a second admin? See who can take over which account.
- Where the credentials are kept, never the credentials themselves.
4. Money that keeps moving
- Renewals and their dates: domains, hosting, developer program fees, software subscriptions.
- Recurring income: who pays you, how, and how to pause it if work stops.
- Taxes or filings that come due on a date.
5. What to do
- Keep running: the minimum to keep clients served for 30 days.
- Hand over: which client goes to which freelancer, and how to move their domain and hosting to them.
- Wind down: what to tell paying users, how to refund, what to switch off and in what order.
6. Keep it current
- Put a date at the top. Re-read it when you add a client or an account.
- Tell the people named in it that it exists and where it is.