The Handover Doc — AI With Tom

Answer it honestly. It's not a comfortable question.

Not "would it survive" — most businesses would, eventually. The real question is smaller and worse: on Monday morning, could anyone actually do your job?

Would they know which customer is waiting on a quote. Which supplier you don't use any more and why. That the invoice from that client always needs chasing twice. Where the spare key is. Which job you agreed to do at a discount as a favour, and shouldn't be charged full price for.

For most owners the answer is no — and not because they're disorganised. It's because the business runs on things they know rather than things that are written down, and that difference is invisible until the day it isn't.

Everything holding your business together that exists only in your head is a risk you've never priced.

I didn't write mine because I was worried about being ill. I wrote it because I got sick of explaining my businesses from scratch every time I sat down to work on them — three businesses, and I kept re-explaining the same context.

So I wrote one document that said what each business was, who it served, what was true right now. Then I realised what I'd actually built: if I disappeared, someone could pick that file up and know where they stood. It was a handover doc. I'd just made it for the wrong reason.

How to do it

Talk it out

Seven sections.
Ramble at your phone.

Let AI sort it

Prompt's
further down.

Tell someone

A doc nobody knows
about isn't a handover.

The seven sections

Ten minutes each. Section six is the one nobody thinks of and it matters most.

01 · What this business does, in plain terms

What you sell, to whom, and how the money actually works.

Why it matters — write it for someone who knows nothing. Not a description you'd put on a website; the one you'd give a competent stranger on their first morning. Those are very different documents and only one of them is useful.

02 · What's in flight right now

Every open job, quote, conversation. What stage it's at and what happens next.

Why it matters — this is the section that decays fastest, and it's the one that costs real money if it's missing. A quote nobody knew about is a job lost. Keep it short enough that updating it is a two-minute job, or you never will.

03 · The people

Customers, suppliers, contractors. Not just names — the history.

Why it matters — a contact list is nearly useless. What's valuable is the bit you'd never write in a CRM: "always pays late but always pays", "don't ring before ten", "we did their extension, don't mention the delay". That's the knowledge that makes someone sound like they belong instead of like a stranger.

04 · Money

What comes in, what goes out, when. Who's owed money and who owes you.

Why it matters — most owners can't produce this in under an hour, which is itself worth knowing. Include the dates things leave the account. Someone covering for you needs to know the rent goes out on the 3rd more than they need your P&L.

05 · Where things live

Accounts, files, tools, the physical stuff. Where each one is and who has access.

Why it matters — people discover during this section that one email address controls everything and only they can get into it. That's worth finding out on a quiet Tuesday.

Do not put passwords in this document. Write down where they're kept and who can reach them. If the answer is "in my head", a password manager with emergency access is an afternoon's work and solves it properly.

06 · What NOT to do

The decisions you'd hate someone making on your behalf.

Why it matters — nobody writes this section and it's the most valuable one. Everyone documents how to do things. Almost nobody documents the lines they wouldn't cross.

Don't discount below this figure. Don't take work from that company. Don't promise a date in December. Don't use that supplier again, whatever they offer. A stand-in has no way of knowing any of it, and these are the mistakes that outlast your absence.

07 · When it goes wrong

The three or four things that predictably break, and what you do about each.

Why it matters — you already know what they are. The van, the supplier who lets you down, the customer who kicks off. You handle them on instinct, which means nobody else can handle them at all.

The prompt

Talk through all seven, paste it in, then this underneath.

That's me talking through my business so that someone could run it if I couldn't.

Turn it into a handover document, organised under these headings: What the business does · In flight now · People · Money · Where things live · What not to do · When it goes wrong.

Write it for a competent person who knows nothing about my business. Plain English, short sentences, no jargon they'd have to ask about.

Then — and this is the important bit — tell me:

1. Where I've referred to something as if it's obvious, but haven't explained it

2. Anything a stand-in would need on day one that I haven't mentioned at all

3. Anywhere I'm the only person who can do something, or reach something

Be blunt about the gaps. A handover doc with holes in it is worse than none, because it'll be trusted.

The three questions at the end are the actual product — anyone can tidy up notes. Being told "you've mentioned 'the usual arrangement' with a supplier four times and never said what it is" is the bit you cannot do for yourself, because it's invisible from the inside.

It's not a document about being ill

Almost nobody who does this ever uses it for an emergency. What they get instead is the list of things they've been quietly carrying alone — and once it's on paper, most of it turns out to be fixable in an afternoon.

One email address controls everything

Domain, bank, invoicing, socials — all recover to one inbox only you can open. Near-universal, and a genuinely bad single point of failure.

A supplier arrangement that isn't written anywhere

An informal discount or priority agreed verbally years ago. Worth real money and it evaporates the moment you're not there to invoke it.

Nobody else knows what anything costs

You price on instinct built over years. A stand-in either guesses or refuses the work. Usually the first thing worth writing down properly.

The "when it goes wrong" section is embarrassingly short

Not because things don't go wrong, but because you never framed them as recurring problems. Writing them down is often the moment you realise one of them is fixable permanently.

Now tell one person it exists and where to find it.

A partner, a family member, whoever would be picking up the pieces. A perfect handover document nobody knows about is worth precisely nothing — and this is the step people skip, because finishing it feels like finishing.

Update it the day something changes, not on a schedule. Schedules get missed; changes are memorable.

New supplier, price change, customer gone — two minutes, same day. That's the only version of this that stays true for more than a month.

Where this goes next

Once it exists, it turns out to be useful for far more than emergencies. It's what you hand a new employee, what you give an accountant, and — if you ever sell — the thing a buyer asks for first. A business that can be handed over is worth more than one that can't, and it's the same document either way.

It's also the best thing you can give an AI about your business, because it's the only document you'll ever write that assumes the reader knows nothing. That's exactly the right assumption.