What records should an agency keep if a client asks how AI was used six months later?
Keep the job records for every deliverable, with the producer labelled on each step (person, agent, or the client-facing label the work shipped under), plus the handovers and their acceptances, retained at least as long as your client contracts run. Review the receipt and actual deliverable before accepting a handover.
The question arrives innocently: a new stakeholder at the client, an audit, a regulator's curiosity, or a renewal negotiation that turns forensic. However it arrives, it asks the same thing: show us, deliverable by deliverable, what AI did, what people did, and what was decided. Agencies answer it at the speed of their records.
The record set that answers it is the one this file builds everywhere: jobs with steps, producer labels intact, receipts checkable, and the client's own acceptance decisions on the handovers. Producer labels carry the specific weight here: "how was AI used" is a question about the division of labour, and the record that shows step by step which steps ran under an agent, which under a person, and which were the client's own decisions is the only answer that does not depend on staff memory. Six months is beyond reliable memory for any busy team; it is nothing to a record.
Retention is the other half: keep these records at least for the contract's life plus its dispute window, exported under your own control per the vendor-exit discipline in this set. An agency that can answer the six-month question in an afternoon turns a threatening audit into a renewal argument, because the transparency the client demanded becomes the transparency the agency advertises.
Checklist: the six-month answer set
Per client, retain: 1. Job records for every deliverable, steps with producer labels. 2. Handovers with the client's recorded acceptances. 3. Change notes and scope decisions. 4. The disclosure wording in force at the time (what the client was told about AI use, per period). 5. Exports under agency control, indexed by client and period. Retention: contract life plus dispute window, minimum. Drill: once a year, pick a client and a month six months back, and produce the set within one working day.
Worked example
One deliverable's answer in miniature: https://zambo.dev/handover/508a46e2-8d6e-4099-bd12-7ae461c72c55 shows a job's steps with the producing party as recorded, addressed to its recipient. Multiplied across an account and indexed, that is the six-month answer: not a narrative about how the agency generally works, but the record of how this client's work was done.
Frequently asked questions
A client asks and some work predates our records. What do we say?
Answer in two parts: the recorded period with links, and the earlier period described honestly as reconstructed from files and correspondence, labelled as such. Clients forgive a dated boundary; they do not forgive discovering that a confident narrative was reconstructed without being told.
Do producer labels expose individual staff unfairly?
Labels record roles and systems (which agent, which team member's session) as the work's provenance. How an agency uses provenance internally is a management choice; the record's duty is accuracy, and accuracy is what protects staff when a client's memory of events differs from theirs.
How long is "six months later" in practice?
Treat six months as the floor. Audits, acquisitions, and disputes reach back years, which is why the retention rule ties to contract life plus the dispute window rather than to the question's phrasing.
By Brennan Zambo, founder of Zambo.
Last verified: 2026-10-17.
Try a handover
A handover gives your client one proof link with verifiable receipts to review, then Accept or Flag.
try it: say 'use zambo to hand this over to <client>' in your ai