Year-End Admin Sprint: What to Finish in the Last Two Months
If your fiscal year ends December 31, 2025, this is your chance to tidy operations, reduce risk, and start January calm. Use this practical runbook to close out People Operations, Compliance, Systems, Contracts, Client Experience, and Operational Planning.
The Big 6 Priorities
1) People Ops & Policy Hygiene
Rosters & Records: Confirm legal names, addresses, personal emails (for emergency communications), job titles, and start/end dates.
Role clarity for 2026: Update org chart, ownership areas, on-call/coverage schedules, and escalation paths.
Paid Time Off & leave: Reconcile remaining 2025 Paid Time Off, rollovers, and blackout dates for Jan–Feb projects.
Policies to refresh: Expense, remote-work, device use, data handling, incident reporting, and travel. Publish updates and require read receipts.
Contractor files: Ensure current Master Service Agreements (Non-Disclosure Agreements/Statement of Work, correct rate cards, and IP/confidentiality clauses.
2) Compliance, Risk & Insurance (Admin Edition)
Licences/certifications: Inventory renewal dates (business licences, domain/SSL, privacy training, industry creds) and calendar them.
Insurance admin: Verify certificates of insurance (COIs) from key vendors; update named insureds and coverage summaries.
Privacy & records: Update your privacy notice, retention schedule, and breach-response contacts. Archive 2025 documents per policy.
3) Systems, Access & Security
Access review (quarterly): Remove leavers, right-size permissions, rotate shared credentials, and enforce MFA across tools.
Device & data controls: Confirm disk encryption, auto-lock, and remote-wipe on company devices; document asset assignments.
Backups: Test a real restore for one critical system; log the result.
Folder naming & archiving: Lock 2025 folders to read-only; create the 2026 structure so teams start clean.
4) Contracts, Vendors & Subscriptions
Renew/cancel/renegotiate: List upcoming renewals (software, service providers, domains). Cancel shelf-ware, consolidate tiers, negotiate annual terms.
Vendor due diligence: For critical vendors, ensure security questionnaires/Data Processing Agreements are current and contacts are correct.
Service Level Agreement sanity check: Confirm support hours/response times you promise—and what vendors promise to you.
5) Client Experience & Revenue Enablement (Non-Accounting)
Statement of Work refresh: Pre-load 2026 scopes, deliverables, and SLAs; gather signatures before holidays.
CRM hygiene (admin tasks): De-duplicate contacts, close stale deals with reasons, standardize stages/fields, and archive dead lists.
Comms kit: Draft “Year-in-Review & What’s Next” email; set holiday hours, emergency contacts, and January kickoff slots.
6) Operating System for Q1
Meeting cadences: Confirm 2026 leadership and team rhythms (weekly ops, pipeline, customer success, retros).
SOPs: Capture “how we do it now” for top workflows; note owner and last-updated date.
Project close-outs: For active 2025 projects, log decisions, risks, and next actions so nothing goes missing over the break.
8-Week Runbook (Nov–Dec 2025)
Week 1 (Nov 3–9)
Publish the year-end timeline to the team.
Start access review; flag leavers & permission fixes.
Inventory licences/certs with renewal dates and owners.
Week 2 (Nov 10–16)
Update policies (device, data, expense, remote work). Capture read receipts.
Kick off vendor & subscription audit; shortlist cancel vs. renew vs. renegotiate.
Week 3 (Nov 17–23)
CRM hygiene sprint: duplicate merge, stage cleanup, field validation rules.
Draft client holiday hours & support notice for approval.
Week 4 (Nov 24–30)
Backups & restore test documented; fix gaps.
Finalize 2026 meeting cadences and calendar them.
Prepare SOW renewals and signature packets.
Week 5 (Dec 1–7)
Lock folder architecture: set 2025 read-only; create 2026 frameworks.
Complete vendor decisions (renew/cancel/negotiations sent).
Send client comms for review (Year-in-Review + January kickoff).
Week 6 (Dec 8–14)
Finish access remediation; enforce MFA; rotate shared passwords.
Refresh contractor packs (MSA/NDA/SOW templates).
Publish SOP updates for top workflows.
Week 7 (Dec 15–21)
Send client comms; schedule January kickoffs.
Confirm device inventory and remote-wipe capabilities.
Verify COIs and vendor DPAs are on file.
Week 8 (Dec 22–31)
Final policy & roster check; emergency contacts updated.
Archive 2025 collaboration channels; spin up 2026 channels/boards.
Share the “Open the Doors January 2” checklist with owners.
PM-Ready Checklist (Copy/Paste)
People Ops
Org chart & ownership areas updated
PTO rollovers/black-outs set & published
Policies refreshed + read-receipts captured
Compliance & Risk
Licence/cert inventory complete with renewal dates
Insurance COIs & coverage summaries filed
Privacy notice & retention schedule updated
Systems & Security
Quarterly access review completed; MFA enforced
Device encryption/auto-lock/remote-wipe verified
Backup restore test passed & logged
2025 archive read-only; 2026 folder structure created
Vendors & Subscriptions
Renewal/cancel/renegotiate decisions logged
Vendor security/DD & DPAs current
SLAs documented (internal & vendor)
Client Experience & Ops
CRM duplicate merge & stage cleanup done
Holiday hours/support message approved & sent
2026 Statement of Work issued & signed
January kickoff slots booked
Operating System for Q1
Leadership/team cadences calendared
Core SOPs updated with owners & dates
2025 project close-outs completed
How an Executive VA Can Orchestrate This for You
Year-End Command Board: Columns for Area → Owner → Due Date → Status → Links.
Automations: Read-receipt chasers, renewal reminders, and access review nudges.
Single Source of Truth: One index doc linking policies, SOPs, licences, SLAs, COIs, and January agendas.
Time Protection: Freeze non-critical launches after Dec 15; use templated updates to cut back-and-forth.
Want it done for you?
Book an Administrative Year-End Strategy Session—we’ll set up your board, drive the tasks,
and hand you a clean start for January.
