Project Close-Out Checklist

Stage one: delivery

Nothing about money can be settled until it is clear what actually got delivered.

• Confirm what has actually been delivered. Approved is not delivered. Work can have passed review and never gone out.
• Send anything approved but not delivered. The most commonly missed step, and the client has usually already paid for it.
• Decide what happens to work in progress. Stop now, let them submit, or let them finish. Default to letting them finish; it is the least destructive.
• Cancel work that has not started, recording the reason. Cancelled with a reason is a fact. Deleted is a gap.
• Close or reassign open blockers. An unresolved blocker on a closed engagement will confuse somebody in six months.
• Hand over files and access the client owns, including anything sitting in a shared account.
• Revoke access in both directions. Yours to their systems, and theirs to yours.

Stage two: money in

• Total what was agreed, including adjustments made along the way. Start from the current agreed value, not the original proposal.
• Invoice everything delivered and not yet billed. Uninvoiced delivered work is the largest silent loss at close-out.
• Decide what happens to instalments not yet due. Cancel, bring forward or leave. Record which, so nobody chases a cancelled instalment next month.
• Agree any early termination adjustment and write it down before everyone moves on.
• Confirm what is still outstanding and when it is due. This is the figure you will actually be chasing.
• Refund or credit any overpayment. Overpayment is the client's money, not a discount you have earned.

Stage three: money out

The stage most likely to be skipped, and the one that costs you people.

• Approve outstanding work so it becomes payable. Somebody who did work before the engagement was cut short is still owed for it.
• Settle advances against final payouts, so nobody is chasing this in two months.
• Pay final amounts, or agree dates for them. Approving a payout and paying it are different things, and only one of them buys goodwill.
• Ask whether anybody is owed something you have not recorded. Memory is not a system, and theirs is better than yours on this subject.

Stage four: record and relationship

• Record why it ended. Ended early is not the same as completed as planned, and the difference matters when you look back.
• Note the final margin, including how much of the cost was additional work nobody planned.
• Note what you would scope differently. Write it while you are still annoyed. It will be more honest than the version you write next quarter.
• Tell the team it has ended, and why. They will hear a version of it either way; better that it is yours.
• Close the loop with the client. A clean ending is the cheapest source of future work there is.

When it ends early

An engagement that stops before it was meant to needs two things a completed one does not.

First, a recorded reason and an effective end date. An engagement left open forever distorts every count you have, and one quietly marked complete tells a future reader something untrue.

Second, a decision on every piece of work still in flight, made deliberately rather than by neglect. Work that is nearly finished usually should be finished: stopping it wastes what has already been spent and leaves the client with something unusable.

The principle underneath both: nothing already earned disappears. Whatever the commercial circumstances of the ending, the people who did work before it were owed for that work, and a close-out that quietly drops it is the fastest way to lose the team you will need for the next engagement.