Winding down well

How you stop is visible to more people than how you ran it, and it is what they will remember. Handled properly, a closure is a fairly ordinary piece of administration and costs you nothing you needed. Handled by going quiet, it costs you relationships and a reputation in a market that is smaller than it looks.

The order that works. Tell customers before they find out, give them a date, and where you can, tell them who else can serve them — a competitor you refer people to is a competitor who refers people back. Settle suppliers, and if you cannot settle in full, say so early with a plan rather than late with an apology; almost every supplier will work with the first and remember the second. Tell anyone working for you before it is obvious, and give them as much notice as you can manage. Collect what you are owed while you still have a relationship in which to ask. Close accounts, subscriptions and registrations properly rather than letting them lapse, because a registration that is left open can carry filing obligations after the business has stopped trading — the point where a professional is worth an hour of fees.

Then write down what happened, for yourself, within a fortnight. The account you write immediately is the one worth having. Six months later you will have a tidier story in which you were unlucky, and the tidier story is less useful to you than the messy accurate one.