The end of the year isn't just about holiday parties and planning headcounts. For operations leaders, it's a rare chance to pause, take stock, and ensure the business is running on solid foundations. Too often, this critical review gets pushed aside or becomes a last-minute scramble.
This isn't just another financial audit. It's a practical, operator-built health check for your business. It's designed for the people running ops by default, the founders, the office managers, the People Ops leads, who are responsible for the quiet, essential work that keeps a company moving.
Our promise is simple: Follow this comprehensive checklist, and nothing important will slip through the cracks. You'll close out the year with confidence and start the next one in complete control.
A. Company & Legal Foundations: Your Operational Bedrock
This is the stuff that gets forgotten until it becomes an emergency. Ensuring your legal and corporate house is in order is fundamental operational hygiene.
The Risk: Small oversights in legal hygiene can become major headaches. An out-of-date registered address or a misplaced contract can cause serious compliance issues down the line. Getting this right is non-negotiable.
The Health-Check Checklist:
- Confirm company registered details are up to date: Check addresses and official records.
- Review shareholder and cap table documentation: Ensure it reflects any changes from the past year.
- Verify director appointments and resolutions are recorded.
- Ensure all contracts signed this year are properly stored and accessible.
- Check that your insurance policies are current and adequate for your current business size and risk profile.
The Modern Approach: Top operators use a central system to track critical documents and deadlines, preventing last-minute scrambles for contracts or compliance forms.
B. Contracts & Vendor Renewals: Taming the Silent Budget Killers
Vendors are essential, but unmanaged contracts can silently drain your budget through unwanted auto-renewals and outdated pricing.
The Risk: Unwanted auto-renewals and outdated contracts silently drain your budget. A single forgotten renewal for a non-critical vendor can cost you thousands. This is one of the easiest areas to find immediate cost savings.
The Health-Check Checklist:
- Review all active vendor contracts: Create a master list if you don't have one.
- Identify all upcoming renewals in the next 90 days.
- Confirm notice periods and termination windows: Mark these in a calendar.
- Flag any vendors that are no longer in use or delivering value.
- Validate who internally owns each vendor relationship.
The Modern Approach: By linking vendors to their contracts in a single hub, you gain full visibility over renewal dates, notice periods, and total spend. This simple act transforms your vendor management from reactive to proactive.
C. Software & SaaS Stack: A Reality Check on Tool Sprawl
In today's workplace, it's easy to accumulate a vast collection of software. A year-end audit is crucial to understand what you're actually using and paying for.
The Risk: Duplicate tools and unused licenses are a hidden source of waste. You might be paying for three different project management tools or have 50 active licenses for a team of 30. This is more common than you think and a huge area for cutting operational costs.
The Health-Check Checklist:
- Audit all software tools currently in use.
- Identify any duplicate or overlapping tools. (e.g., Slack, Teams, and Google Chat).
- Confirm the number of active licenses vs. actual users.
- Assign an internal owner for each tool.
- Cancel any unused or lingering trial subscriptions.
The Modern Approach: A central view of your software stack helps you see overlaps instantly, clarifying ownership and ensuring you only pay for what you use.
D. People & HR Operations: Ensuring a Compliant and Supported Team
Your team is your most important asset. Ensuring their records are complete and compliant is a high-trust responsibility.
The Risk: Outdated records create compliance gaps and a poor employee experience. From incorrect right-to-work documentation to a messy offboarding process, HR oversights create legal risks and damage your reputation as an employer.
The Health-Check Checklist:
- Confirm all employee records are complete and up-to-date.
- Ensure right-to-work documentation is correctly stored (e.g., I-9s in the US, Right to Work checks in the UK).
- Review probation period end dates for recent hires.
- Confirm that all employees who left this year were fully offboarded (assets returned, access revoked).
- Update any role descriptions that have evolved over the year.
The Modern Approach: Centralizing staff records with key documents and tasks ensures onboarding is smooth, offboarding is complete, and compliance is maintained across the entire employee lifecycle.
E. Assets & Equipment: An Accurate Picture of What You Own
Laptops, phones, and office equipment represent a significant investment. Knowing what you have and who has it is fundamental.
The Risk: Inaccurate asset registers lead to lost equipment and unnecessary spending. If you don't know what you have, you can't manage it. You may end up buying new laptops when you have perfectly good ones sitting in a drawer.
The Health-Check Checklist:
- Review your asset register for completeness and accuracy.
- Confirm ownership of high-value items like laptops and mobile devices.
- Check that asset assignments match your current staff list.
- Identify any missing, unreturned, or end-of-life equipment.
- Plan for any necessary replacements or upgrades for the upcoming year.
The Modern Approach: Linking assets directly to their users in a central registry makes it easy to track assignments, manage repairs, and plan for future needs.
F. Financial Operations: Empowering Your Finance Team
While finance owns the numbers, operations owns the inputs. Clean, organized operational data makes the finance team's job infinitely easier.
The Risk: Disorganized invoices and incorrect billing info create friction for your finance team. Every time a finance person has to chase you for a missing invoice or ask who a vendor is, it's a drag on efficiency.
The Health Check Checklist:
- Confirm your company's expense policies are up to date and accessible.
- Ensure all major invoices from the year are centrally filed and accessible.
- Check that the billing contacts for your key vendors are correct.
- Flag any unresolved payment disputes with vendors.
- Confirm who the budget owners are for key operational areas for the next year.
The Modern Approach: When ops teams keep vendor and invoice data clean in a central system, the finance team can work faster and more accurately. It's a true win-win.
G. Risk, Compliance & Insurance: Your Business's Safety Net
This area is all about protecting the business from the unexpected. It's invisible until it explodes.
The Risk: An expired insurance policy or a missed compliance deadline can be catastrophic. These are the silent risks that can threaten the entire business if not managed proactively.
The Health-Check Checklist:
- Review all business insurance coverage (e.g., liability, property, cyber) and confirm that it's adequate.
- Check all policy renewal dates and add them to a calendar.
- Confirm that key compliance documents are current (e.g., health and safety policies).
- Review any incident logs from the year to identify recurring operational risks.
- Ensure emergency contact lists are documented and up to date.
The Modern Approach: Automated reminders for policy renewals and compliance dates in a central system act as an infallible safety net, ensuring you never miss a critical deadline.
H. Internal Processes & Knowledge: Reducing Key-Person Dependency
What happens if a key team member leaves tomorrow? A year-end review is a perfect time to ensure critical knowledge isn't trapped in one person's head.
The Risk: Critical knowledge living in one person's head is a huge business liability. This is often called the "bus factor." If a process isn't documented, it doesn't really exist, and you're one resignation away from a crisis.
The Health-Check Checklist:
- Review key Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and internal guides to ensure they are current.
- Identify critical undocumented processes.
- Check permissions and access ownership for key systems.
- Archive outdated documents to reduce clutter and confusion.
The Modern Approach: A searchable, central source of truth for SOPs and guides empowers the whole team and reduces your "bus factor." It's a core part of building a resilient, scalable operation.
I. Planning for The Following Year: From Review to Action
The final step of any good review is to look forward. Use the insights you've gathered to build a stronger, more efficient operation for the year ahead.
The Opportunity: Use this year's insights to build a more resilient operation for the next year. Don't just fix the problems of the past year; build systems to prevent them from happening again.
The Health-Check Checklist:
- Identify the top 3 operational bottlenecks you experienced this year.
- Flag any recurring issues or near misses that need a permanent solution.
- Note any tools or vendors that need to be replaced in the coming year.
- Identify clear opportunities for automation.
- Set your top 3 operational priorities for the first 90 days of the new year.
The Modern Approach: Identifying recurring bottlenecks is the first step. The next is using automation and streamlined workflows to solve them permanently, freeing up your team for higher-value work.
Conclusion: Ditch the Annual Scramble for Year-Round Control
Congratulations on completing your year-end operations health check. You now have a clear, accurate picture of the state of your operations and a concrete plan for the year ahead.
Now, imagine if this clarity and control weren't just a once-a-year event. Imagine if your vendors, documents, assets, and tasks were always organized, visible, and under control.
If this checklist resonates with you, it's because it's exactly what we built Office IQ to solve. See how our platform helps ops teams stay in control, all year round.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is the difference between an ops health check and a financial audit?
A financial audit focuses on verifying the accuracy of your financial statements. An ops health check is a broader review of your company's foundational processes, tools, and risks to ensure the business is running efficiently and compliantly.
Who in the company should own this operational checklist?
This is typically owned by an Operations Manager, Office Manager, or a Founder in smaller companies. It's a collaborative effort that requires input from HR, finance, and team leads, but one person should be responsible for driving it to completion.
How often should we perform an operations health check?
While this checklist is designed for a comprehensive year-end review, many high-performing teams conduct a lighter version of this check quarterly to stay ahead of issues with vendors, software, and internal processes.
Is this checklist useful for a fully remote or hybrid company?
Absolutely. In fact, it's even more critical for remote or hybrid companies where processes can be less visible. A formal health check ensures that assets, compliance, and internal knowledge are managed effectively, regardless of where your team is located.
