Wellrun guide

Handing over a business without it falling over

To hand over a business, list what stops first if you are uncontactable, write down every system with whose name it is in and where its reset code goes, catch the unrecorded know-how over a fortnight, and agree how the new person reaches you until week four.

By Wellrun. Last updated 15 October 2026.

A handover is not a meeting. It is the period, usually weeks, in which everything that lived in one person's head has to start living somewhere else, while the business keeps trading.

It happens on a sale, but it happens far more often for ordinary reasons: a manager taking over, an owner stepping back, a long illness, a partner leaving. The work is the same in every case, and doing it once means it is done for all of them.

What should you write down so the business runs without you?

Write down five things: every system the business trades on, with whose name the account is in and where its reset code goes; every licence and insurance policy with its expiry date; the lease and the date its option has to be exercised by; one whole job from enquiry to invoice; and the decisions only you make, with how you make them. The test is whether somebody else can find each of those without ringing you.

The handover checklist, in the order the rest of this guide takes it:

1. List what stops first if you are uncontactable from tomorrow.
2. Write down every system the business trades on: what it does, whose name the account is in, where you sign in and where the reset code goes.
3. Note whether you have ever got your own data out of each system.
4. For two weeks, write down every question only you could answer, with the answer.
5. Hand the work over in four stages: they watch, you watch, they do it and tell you, then they do it.
6. Write down the boundaries you decide by, not just the tasks.
7. If it is a sale, ask your solicitor and accountant early what transfers and whose consent it needs.
8. Agree how the new person reaches you, for how long and for what, through week four.

Start with what stops, not with what is important

Ask a straightforward question and answer it honestly: if you were uncontactable from tomorrow, what stops first?

Not what would be difficult. What actually halts. Usually it is a short list and rarely the one people expect. It is often not the skilled work at all. It is the approval nobody else can give, the supplier who only deals with you, the account only you can log into, the password that lives in your head.

That list is the handover, in priority order. Everything else can follow.

Which systems and logins go on the list first?

Every system the business depends on to trade goes on the list, ahead of anything more interesting, because access is what causes the most immediate damage when it is missing. Someone cannot reach the booking system, cannot issue a refund, cannot get into the domain to fix the website.

For every system the business depends on, write down four things:

• What it is and what it does, in one line, so somebody who has never used it knows why it matters.
• Whose name the account is in. The entity's, or a person's. Be honest, because this determines whether it can be handed over at all.
• Where you sign in. The address, written down, not living in one browser's history.
• Where a reset code goes. The recovery email or phone. This is the one that strands people: an account in the company name whose reset code goes to a personal phone that has left the business is not really in the company's name.

It is also worth recording whether you have ever successfully got your own data out of each system, and when. A point-of-sale or accounting system you have never exported from is a system you do not yet know you can leave.

Wellrun's Systems and Logins register is this list, one line per system, and there is nowhere in it to put a password. Start your 7 free days, no card.

How do you capture what nobody has written down?

By catching it over a fortnight as it comes up, rather than by trying to recall it. Every business runs on things nobody has recorded because nobody thought of them as information: the supplier who will do a rush job if you ring rather than email, the customer who always disputes the first invoice, the machine that needs the second switch first.

You cannot recall these on demand. You can catch them, if you set out to.

For two weeks, every time you answer a question only you could have answered, write the question and the answer down. Do not organise it. The list is unglamorous and it is the most valuable document produced in the whole handover, because it is precisely the material that has never existed outside one person.

How should the work itself be handed over?

By shadowing, in four stages, over weeks rather than in a meeting. The pattern is old and reliable, and the order matters more than the pace.

1. They watch you do it. You narrate the decisions, not just the actions.
2. You watch them do it. You stay quiet unless something is about to go wrong.
3. They do it alone and tell you afterwards.
4. They do it.

Most failed handovers stop after stage one, because stage one feels like progress and stages two and three feel slow. Stage two is where you find out what you left out. What comes out of stages one and two is a procedure, and writing one somebody else can follow is its own skill.

Write down the decisions, not just the tasks

Tasks are the easy part and people usually pick them up faster than expected. What takes years is judgement: when to say no to a job, what discount is acceptable, when a customer has become more trouble than they are worth, when to bring somebody in.

You cannot transfer judgement in a document, but you can transfer the boundaries. Write down the rules you actually follow, including the ones you have never said aloud: the minimum job size, the payment terms you will not move on, the work you decline. New people are not slower because they lack skill. They are slower because they do not know where the edges are, so they check everything.

If the handover is a sale

Two things change. The first is that what transfers is now a legal question, not just a practical one: leases, licences, supplier and customer agreements, and employment arrangements each have their own rules, and several of them need somebody else's consent. That is work for your solicitor and accountant, early.

The second is that the buyer is assessing the handover as they experience it. A handover that runs on documents suggests a business that will keep running. A handover that runs on a phone call to the former owner every second day suggests one that will not, and that is the question they will keep asking.

See also: the documents buyers commonly ask for.

The thirty days after

Handovers are usually judged too early. The first week goes well because everything is fresh and the outgoing person is still around.

The real test is week four, when something unusual happens for the first time. Plan for it: agree in advance how the incoming person reaches you, for how long, and for what. A defined arrangement is better for both sides than an open-ended one that quietly becomes permanent, which is how an owner who has sold the business finds themselves still running it in March.

The measure

Not whether the handover documents exist. Whether, in the last month, somebody other than you opened one and got what they needed from it without ringing you.

That is the same measure that tells you whether a business runs on systems or on a person, and it is the same thing a buyer is testing when they ask how the business would operate without you.