A restaurant accountant handover package that is only a QuickBooks backup is not a handover.

A handover is not a file transfer. The accounting file holds balances; it does not hold the reasoning that produced them. Whoever picks the work up next either inherits that reasoning or invents a replacement, and the replacement rarely matches. That is how a business ends up with a prior-year comparison it cannot explain.

What follows is the pack a complete handover contains. Send it as a written request with a date on it rather than raising it on a call, because a written request is the thing that gets actioned.

What follows is the full package, in six parts. If you are appointing a stand-in rather than a permanent successor the rules change — skip ahead to managing a handover to a temporary or interim accountant, because responsibility moves twice in that arrangement and the second move is the one nobody plans for.

1. Books and ledgers

The foundation. Without these, nothing else can be checked.

• Trial balance as at the handover date, and at the last completed period end.
• General ledger detail for the current year and the full prior year.
• Closing balance sheet and year-to-date profit and loss on the same dates.
• Administrative access to the accounting file, transferred to you as owner — not a shared login on someone else's subscription.
• The chart of accounts, with any mapping notes explaining what actually gets posted where.
• The period calendar in use, if the business closes on four-week periods or 4-4-5 quarters rather than calendar months.

2. Reconciliations and the schedules behind each balance

This is the section most handovers skip, and the one that determines whether the opening balance sheet can be trusted. Every balance sheet line should have something behind it.

• Latest completed bank and credit card reconciliations, with the list of outstanding items — not just the reconciled figure.
• Merchant settlement reconciliations, including each delivery platform, and the treatment applied to commission, promotional discounts and chargebacks.
• Undeposited funds detail, with an explanation of anything sitting there for more than a few days.
• Accounts receivable and accounts payable ageings at detail level, with a note on anything disputed.
• Inventory valuation at the last count, and the basis used to value it.
• Fixed asset register with cost, accumulated depreciation, method and useful lives.
• Loan and lease amortization schedules, with covenant terms where any exist.
• Prepaid and accrual schedules showing what is in each balance and how it unwinds.
• Suspense and clearing account detail. Anything parked here is a question somebody deferred.

3. Payroll

Payroll carries the most exposure and the shortest correction window, so it is worth requesting separately rather than assuming it comes with the books.

• Full year-to-date payroll register, by employee and by location.
• Quarterly and annual returns filed for the year to date, with confirmations.
• State unemployment account numbers and current experience rates for every state you operate in.
• Tip credit rate build, tip pool composition and the records supporting both.
• Form 8027 workpapers if any establishment meets the filing test.
• A written statement of who is filing year-end W-2s and 1099s, and up to what date. This is the single most common gap.

4. Tax

• Last filed returns for every entity, federal, state and local.
• The workpapers behind those returns, including the book-to-tax adjustments.
• Carryforwards: losses, credits, basis and at-risk figures, with the schedules that track them.
• Sales tax registrations by jurisdiction, filing frequency and the return history.
• Any open notices, examinations or correspondence, whether or not they were considered resolved.
• Estimated payment history and what the next instalment was calculated on.

5. Systems, access and authority

Access is where handovers stall for weeks, because it usually requires someone to act rather than to send.

• Ownership of the accounting subscription transferred, not delegated.
• Bank feed connections and who authorized them.
• POS, payroll and AP automation integrations, and which direction data flows in each.
• Tax authority online access, including any agent authorizations that need withdrawing or re-appointing.
• The current approval matrix: who can approve an invoice, release a payment, or change a bank detail.
• A list of every third party holding your data, so you know what to revoke.

6. The memo nobody sends

Ask for it explicitly, because it is not a standard deliverable and it is worth more than most of the schedules. In plain language, from the person who did the work:

• Known issues they would have fixed with more time.
• Estimates and the reasoning behind them — accrual rates, allowances, anything judgmental.
• Unusual accounting policies, and why they were adopted.
• Anything that has been treated inconsistently between periods.
• Deadlines falling in the next ninety days.

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Handing over to a temporary or interim accountant

An interim appointment is a different exercise, and treating it like a permanent one is what causes the damage. In a permanent handover, responsibility moves once. In an interim arrangement it moves twice, and the second move is the one nobody plans for.

Four things are worth fixing in writing before the interim accountant starts.

The practical test is simple: if the interim accountant disappeared tomorrow, could a third party pick the work up from the documentation alone? If not, the arrangement has a single point of failure and the whole point of an interim appointment was to avoid one.

The sequence

Order matters, because some steps cannot be undone and one of them is a deadline.

• Read the engagement letter first. It governs notice, fees and what happens to records. Do this before any conversation.
• Settle what is genuinely owed if you can. An unpaid balance complicates a records request in most places.
• Appoint the incoming accountant and have them send the professional clearance letter. It usually moves faster than a request from the client.
• Give notice in writing with the effective date, and pick a period boundary.
• Request the pack above in one written list with a response date, rather than piecemeal.
• Transfer access before revoking anything. Revoking first has locked more than one business out of its own filing history.
• Run a parallel period where the timing allows it, so the first independent close is checked against a known-good one.
• Reconcile the opening balance sheet line by line before the first close. Every unexplained line is a future restatement.

When the outgoing accountant will not cooperate

It happens, and it is rarely malice — usually it is an unpaid balance, a bruised relationship, or a firm that is simply too busy. Records you supplied are generally yours. Work you have paid for is normally releasable. An accountant's own internal workpapers frequently are not, and that is a legitimate position rather than obstruction. What is releasable depends on your engagement letter and on the rules applying in your state and to your accountant's professional body, so read the engagement letter and take advice if the amounts at stake justify it — we are accountants, not attorneys.

In practice: put the request in writing with a reasonable deadline, have the incoming accountant make it through the clearance letter, keep the exchange civil, and start rebuilding from source records in parallel rather than waiting. Bank statements, payroll provider records, POS exports and tax transcripts can reconstruct most of a set of books. It is slower and it costs more, but it does not depend on anyone else's goodwill.

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Related: how our handover works, week by week · how it works · restaurant bookkeeping · New York restaurant accounting