Year-End Admin Checklist for Coaches
A year-end admin review for coaches covers six areas: finances, client files, agreements, privacy, professional development and your tools. Working through this in December means you start January without a backlog and avoid surprises at tax time or when a client asks about their data.
Use the checklist below and tick off what is done. Plan half a day to a full day, depending on how well you kept up during the year.
1. Finances
- Have all sessions of this year been invoiced?
- Are there outstanding invoices? Send a reminder before the holidays.
- Are your business expenses complete, such as training, supervision, software and books?
- Keep your financial records for as long as your local tax rules require. Depending on the country, that is often 5 to 10 years.
- Are you introducing a new rate on January 1? Inform existing clients in time.
2. Client Files
- Are the notes for all sessions complete?
- Is the goal and the next step clear for each active program?
- Are closed programs actually recorded as closed? See how to end a coaching program well.
- Are there loose notes in notebooks, emails or on your phone that belong in a client file?
3. Agreements
- Does every active client have a signed coaching agreement?
- Are agreements from closed programs archived?
- Does your standard agreement still fit your offer and rates for next year?
4. Privacy and GDPR
As a coach, you are the data controller for your clients' data. GDPR requires that you do not keep personal data longer than necessary. The turn of the year is a fixed moment to check that.
- Which files from old programs do you no longer need? Delete them, or keep only what you are legally required to keep.
- Is client data stored where it does not belong, such as your downloads folder, WhatsApp or a shared drive?
- Do you have a data processing agreement with every software provider that processes client data?
- Is your privacy statement still up to date?
More background in what is a privacy-first coaching platform.
5. Professional Development
- Are all your training and supervision hours of this year logged?
- Do you have certificates and proof in one place?
- Are you on schedule for your renewal? See how to track CPD hours and supervision as a coach.
6. Tools and Subscriptions
- Which tools did you actually use this year, and which are you paying for without using?
- Where do you most often search for information you cannot find right away?
- Do you work with more than three separate systems for calendar, notes, assignments and progress? Then combining them is often the biggest time saver. Read how to run your coaching practice without spreadsheets.
Less Admin in the New Year
FocusCoachee brings client files, sessions, goals, actions, coaching agreements, documents and progress together per program. Data is stored encrypted on European servers, deleted items are permanently removed after 30 days and closed programs follow fixed retention periods. That way, much of this checklist is already taken care of throughout the year.
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