There are about 10 weeks left until 2027. Take away the holidays and you have roughly 8 working weeks. Whatever you leave for now, you take with you into January, exactly when you want to start the new year fresh. This checklist sets out, area by area, what to check.

How to get ready for Q1

You don’t have to do it all in one afternoon. Spread the five areas over the weeks until Christmas. Block a fixed hour in your calendar every week and tick off a few items.

Each area comes with suggested tasks you can pick up. But also ask yourself: which tasks usually drag on into January, and how can you get ahead of that stress?

Admin: have all hours been invoiced?

At the end of the year, it often turns out that more hours were worked than invoiced. Usually nobody does anything wrong. It happens in the steps between time tracking and the invoice: hours that are logged too late, end up on the wrong project or are copied over by hand.

Check:

  • Are there still hours from September or October that you can invoice?
  • Have all invoices you sent been paid?
  • Have any hours been logged to the wrong project or budget?
  • Is everything ready for the year-end close with your accountant?

Tip: schedule the meeting with your accountant now. In January, everyone is busy.

Rates: what changes on 1 January?

A rate change you announce in December feels like a surprise to clients. Announce it in November and they have time to include it in next year’s budget. That makes the conversation a lot easier.

Check:

  • Do your rates still match the value you deliver and your costs?
  • Which clients get a new rate from 1 January, and do they know yet?
  • Does the change also apply to ongoing retainers, or only on renewal?
  • How and when will you tell your clients?

Tip: explain in one sentence why the rate is changing. A concrete reason works better than a percentage alone.

Deadlines and capacity: what really still needs to be done?

December is shorter than it looks. Subtract the holidays and your team’s days off, and only then look at what still fits. Whatever doesn’t fit, discuss with the client now, not in the last week of the year.

Check:

  • Which projects still need to be delivered this year?
  • Does that match the hours your team has left, including holidays?
  • Which deadlines can you move to next year by agreement?
  • Who is consistently above 100%?

Tip: a deadline you move in November is an agreement. A deadline you miss on 20 December is a problem.

Client contracts: renew, adjust or wrap up

Many partnerships run per calendar year. If you only look at the contracts in January, you’re too late to change anything in the agreements.

Check:

  • Which contracts end on 31 December?
  • Which partnerships continue into 2027, and do the agreements need to change?
  • Which clients do you still want to sit down with for a review?
  • Are there clients you’d be better off parting ways with?

Tip: a review meeting in November is also a good moment to discuss the work for Q1.

Processes and tools: what are you taking into 2027?

Count how many tools your agency uses. Often it’s one for sales, one for client communication, one for projects and one for admin. Each tool does its own job well, but you retype the information between them, or you have to update it by hand in every app.

Check:

  • Which tools do you barely use?
  • Where do you retype information from one tool into another?
  • Which subscriptions renew automatically in January, and do you want them to?
  • Are there new tools on the market that fit better with the way you work?

Tip: if you want to work differently in Q1, make a choice in Q4. A switch takes a few weeks before everyone is used to it.

Planning around the holidays

Besides the five areas, there are three things that take up time every year:

  • Don’t put all your deadlines in the last two weeks of December. Create room by planning them earlier in December instead. That way your whole team goes into the holidays relaxed.
  • Take your team’s requested time off into account, so projects don’t stall and the workload doesn’t land on whoever is left.
  • Think about gifts for your team and your clients in good time. Shipping takes longer in December. Leave it too late and you only give yourself more stress.

How FlowQi helps

Many of these checks come down to the same question: how do you streamline the information within your agency, so you tackle problems in time and don’t end up with a backlog? In FlowQi, clients, projects, tasks and logged hours are in one place. You can see per project how much time has been logged and which tasks are still open, without first making three exports.

It doesn’t all have to be perfect. But if you make time in Q4, you start January with a clear overview instead of playing catch-up.