Handing over to the next year group

You make a yearbook exactly once. Which means: every year a committee starts from zero, looks for the same printers, makes the same three mistakes and discovers the same truth in March — that they should have started in October.

And yet the knowledge is already in the building. It just never gets passed on, because nobody is responsible for it.

The handover costs one hour. It is the only task in this whole project that brings you nothing any more — and the one with the best ratio of effort to effect.

When

Straight after distribution, not after the holidays. Two reasons: you still remember what was difficult, and the new year group is about to form its committee. After the summer half the knowledge is gone and your head is elsewhere.

Practically: the last week of school, one hour, two people from you, three to five from the coming year group.

What you pass on

1. A copy

The most effective handover present there is. A finished book in the hand replaces every explanation of what is possible — and at the same time shows the scale, which nobody estimates realistically in advance.

Put a note inside it: print run, page count, price per copy, printer. Four numbers that save the next committee their first calculation.

2. The contact list

The file that is worth the most and takes five minutes to write:

• Printer: name, contact person, what it cost, how long it took, what file format they wanted.
• Sponsors: who said yes and how much, who was asked and declined (saves the next year group the round), who the contact was.
• Venue and suppliers for the ball, with price and a one-sentence verdict.
• Contacts at school: who in the office helps, who handles the permissions, which teacher pulls their weight.

One sentence of assessment per entry is worth more than the address alone. “Cheap, but slow to reply” is real information.

3. The schedule with your real dates

Not the plan you made at the start — the one you actually lived. With the dates that slipped, and why.

This is the most honest and most useful part of the handover: “We wanted to start the profiles in November, started in January, and that’s why we only had a 60 % return rate in April.”

4. The three things you would do differently

Not ten. Three. Nobody reads a longer list, and three concrete points actually get acted on.

In practice they are usually from these categories:

• “Start earlier” — almost always on the list
• “Don’t switch everything on at once”
• “Collect photos right after the event, not at the end”
• “Have teacher quotes approved from the start”
• “Bigger print run / smaller print run”

5. The access, handed over cleanly

The part that goes wrong technically. Handing over does not mean handing over passwords.

• Nothing lives on a private device. Photos, layout files, adverts — everything in one place somebody else can reach.
• No shared password. The new year group gets its own accounts, not yours.
• The year-group fund is closed, with accounts everybody has seen. An open balance is an inheritance nobody wants. See Distributing, selling, leftover copies.

On AbiHive itself: the new year group creates its own year group — it does not take over yours. That’s by design, not by accident: your profiles, photos and quotes belong to your year group and not to the next. What is handed over is knowledge, not a data set. Anyone still at school who joins the next committee can be in both year groups.

What the next year group should know first

If you only have five minutes, say these four things:

1. Start in October, not in March. Not because of the work — because of the response time of 90 people.
2. Motto first. It determines the title, the cover and the colours; everything else builds on it.
3. Divide the work from day one, with names and separate areas. Otherwise two people end up doing it.
4. Take one deadline per area, not one for everything.

Everything else is in the Schedule for a new year group and the Guide — you can just pass the link on.

The handover template

One page is enough. Fill it in in twenty minutes:

YEARBOOK [year] — HANDOVER

Numbers
  Print run: ___   Pages: ___   Price/copy: ___ €
  Sponsorship income: ___ €     Surplus: ___ €

Printer
  Name / contact: ______________________
  Cost: ___ €   Lead time: ___ working days
  Wanted: PDF with ___ mm bleed, colour space ___
  Verdict in one sentence: ______________________

Sponsors (confirmed)
  ______________________  ___ €  Contact: ______
  ______________________  ___ €  Contact: ______

Asked, declined
  ______________________________________________

Our real schedule
  Start: ______  Content closed: ______
  Internal deadline: ______  Print handover: ______
  What slipped and why: ________________________

The three things we would do differently
  1. ___________________________________________
  2. ___________________________________________
  3. ___________________________________________

Contacts at school
  ______________________________________________

Takeaways

• Handover in the last week of school, not after the holidays.
• One copy with four numbers on a note inside it.
• A contact list with one sentence of assessment per entry — including the refusals.
• Your real schedule, not the planned one.
• Exactly three suggestions for improvement.
• Books closed, nothing on private devices, own accounts for the new team.