Handover Document Template: What to Write Before You Leave

A handover document lets someone else take over your work without calling you. It covers six things: open work and its real status, recurring processes, the reasons behind key decisions, important contacts, where files and systems are, and upcoming risks. Copy the template below, link to existing documents, and review it with your successor.

Handovers are needed when someone resigns, retires, moves to another team, goes on long leave, or rotates out of a project. The template is the same; only the time available changes.

The handover document template

1. Summary (fill in last)

• Role: ______
• Handover from: ______ to: ______
• Date: ______
• The three things the new owner must act on in the first two weeks:

  1. ---

  2. ---

  3. ---

2. Open work

"Real status" means what you would tell a colleague, not what the tracker says. For example: "Marked 80% done, but blocked on legal approval nobody has chased."

3. Commitments

Promises made to colleagues, customers, partners or officials that are not in any tracker.

4. Recurring tasks and calendar

Include renewals, audits, filings, reports and budget cycles. These are the tasks most often forgotten, because they happen rarely.

5. How things really work

• Where the documented process differs from practice, and why:
• Workarounds in use and what they work around:
• Personal files, spreadsheets or scripts the work depends on (move them to a shared location):
• The checks you do before calling something finished:

6. Decisions and context

Add anything that looks odd to a newcomer but is deliberate. If your team has a decision log, link the entries instead.

7. People

8. Systems, files and access

Never write passwords here.

9. Risks and watch-outs

• Coming up in the next 90 days:
• Things that have gone wrong before, and the fix:
• Things not to change without asking (and whom to ask):
• Topics where you are the only person who understands the detail:

10. After I leave

• Am I available for questions after my last day? Until when, and how?
• Documents worth reading first:
• The question I expect you to have in three months:

How to write a good handover document

1. Start on day one of the notice period. Add to it daily rather than writing it all at the end.
2. Rank by what breaks first. The successor reads top-down and may not finish.
3. Write status in plain sentences. "Waiting for the client's sign-off; they usually need two reminders" beats "In progress."
4. Link, do not copy. Copied documents go out of date.
5. Explain the why. Instructions without reasons get changed the first time they look inconvenient.
6. Review it together. Walk the successor through it and fix what they do not understand.

Handover checklist

• Every open item has a named next owner
• Every commitment's other party has been told
• Recurring tasks for the next 12 months are listed
• Key contacts introduced, not just listed
• Personal files moved to shared locations
• Access transfer requested from IT
• Successor has reviewed the document
• Manager has signed off

Where Reattend fits

The hardest parts of a handover are commitments and decisions, because nobody wrote them down at the time. Reattend's desktop app remembers them as work happens: decisions, commitments, meeting notes and the people involved, captured on each person's computer. The exit interview in the app produces a handoff document from that record. Whichever way you work, the template above is a solid structure. For longer transitions, pair it with a knowledge transfer plan.