What should I include in a delivery email to a client?
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.
A note on scope first, because this question is ambiguous: this page covers delivering professional work to a client, drafts, designs, research, code, campaigns. It is not about shipping physical goods; parcel delivery emails are a different craft with different contents.
The delivery email's job is to convert finished work into an accepted, paid delivery with the fewest possible follow-ups. Every element earns its place by removing a question. Naming the deliverable against the brief removes "is this everything." The record link removes "how do I check it," because the steps, sources, and any receipt can be sampled from one place. The flags, named by you before the client finds them, remove the suspicion that checking would be adversarial: an unresolved source you disclose is a quality signal, not a confession extracted later.
The decision ask is where most delivery emails fail by diffusion: three questions, no deadline, sent to a thread. One decision ("accept, or hold and name the step"), one approver, one date from your terms. After acceptance, the same thread carries the invoice reference, and the whole exchange files into the job folder as the delivery's paper trail.
Template: the six-line delivery email
Subject: Delivered: [deliverable] for [project]. Line 1: "Delivered today: [deliverable], covering [brief items in five words]." Line 2: "The work record is here: [handover link]. It shows each step, its result, and the sources used." Line 3: "Flags: [unresolved or unchecked items named, or 'none']." Line 4: "Please record your decision on that page: accept, or hold and name the step." Line 5: "Per our terms, the review window runs to [date]; the invoice follows acceptance." Line 6: "Next step after acceptance: [the following phase or 'the project closes']." Signature. Nothing else; attachments ride inside the record.
Worked example
The link at Line 2 opens a record in the shape of the public handover at https://zambo.dev/handover/508a46e2-8d6e-4099-bd12-7ae461c72c55 : steps readable in order by the client the email addresses. The email's brevity works because the link carries the substance.
Frequently asked questions
Should I attach the files as well as the link?
The record carries the deliverables; attachments duplicate them into versions that drift. If the client's systems require files in their own store, send the files as the copies and name the record as the reference version in Line 2.
How do I handle a delivery the client must forward internally?
The link forwards perfectly, which is one of its virtues: whoever receives it sees the same record, and the decision still lands in one place. Add one line naming who the decision belongs to, so forwarding does not diffuse it.
What if the client replies with approval in the email instead of on the page?
Welcome it, then bind it: reply once, naming the record link and the date of their approval, and record the decision in the job index. The pattern from the confirmation page in this cluster keeps email approvals from floating free of the version they approved.
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