What records should I close out before December 31?
A handover brings the recorded AI work and its verifiable receipts into one proof link. Review the evidence behind each claim, check what was and was not observed, then Accept or Flag.
Year-end record work has two very different costs depending on the year behind it. A recorded year closes in sessions: the lists exist, the gaps are visible, and the work is finishing rather than searching. An unrecorded year closes in archaeology, and its output is a document that admits, line by line, what cannot be shown. This page is written for the first kind and as the plan that makes next year the first kind.
Work the lists in order. Open handovers first, because they involve other people: every delivered job still in its open state gets a decision chase this month, and the ones that stay open get a dated note, so January inherits facts instead of mysteries. The job index second: every invoice of the year matched to a record, the unmatched marked in the open rather than silently absent. Spend third, reconciled while statements are fresh. Access fourth, because December departures and dormant connections are easiest to revoke in a batch. Export last, when the other four have settled, so the archive captures the closed state.
File the output as the year's closing packet, with the gap page if one is needed. Tax season, client audits, and your own Q4 review all draw from that packet, which is why an afternoon in December is worth a week in March.
Checklist: the December 31 close-out
List 1, open handovers: every open record chased once; remaining opens carry a dated note. List 2, job index: all invoices matched to records; unmatched marked. List 3, spend: agent and tool spend reconciled to statements; caps reviewed for January. List 4, access: inventory reviewed; dormant connections and departed users revoked. List 5, export: the year's records exported to company storage; the closing packet filed with the gap page if any list produced one. Deadline discipline: lists 1 to 4 by mid-December; the export is the year's last records act.
Worked example
List 1's objects look like the public record at https://zambo.dev/handover/bd7e5325-33fd-4c5e-b029-76b781fa2f51 in its open state: delivered, readable, awaiting a decision. December's job is to leave as few records as possible in exactly that state, and to know precisely why each remaining one is there.
Frequently asked questions
A client will not decide an open handover no matter how I chase. What closes it?
A dated note on your side: delivery date, chases sent, and the state carried into the new year as open-by-client. The record and the note together are a closed administrative position even when the decision never arrives.
We did almost nothing recorded this year. Where do we start?
With List 2 and honesty: build the index from invoices, mark the unrecorded rows, and let that marked index be this year's gap page. Then January's setup (a sibling page in this file) starts the recorded year properly.
Should the export replace the live records?
No. The export is your independent copy under your retention schedule; the live records remain the checkable originals clients and auditors use. Keeping both is the point of the export.
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