Close matters, clients and employee records without losing traceability

Your data before starting

Choose one open matter from your subscription that you are authorised to inspect read-only and record it as your selected matter. Identify its customer, owner and at least one dependency to check: event, budget, time, expense, draft, invoice or payment. Also select one historic sales code and one historic expense code that are still referenced, for read-only review. Record the counts and dates returned by your own filters; only those results can support your decision.

What you will learn

Distinguish ending or deactivating a record from destructive closure or deletion.
Review dependencies before changing the status of a matter, client or employee.
Understand the different purposes of history, backups, retention and NF525 tax archives.

Recommended workflow

Inventory open events, deadlines, budgets, time, expenses, draft invoices, issued documents and payments linked to the record.
Reassign future responsibilities and complete, correct or document outstanding transactions.
Use an ended, departure or inactive status whenever it meets the business need and retains history.
Before any destructive operation, follow the authorised retention, backup and, where applicable, NF525 archive procedure and record the decision.

Before continuing

A filtered-out record is not assumed to have no dependencies.
Issued invoices, payments and audit evidence remain accessible for the required retention period.
A backup is not treated as a substitute for a tax archive or a documented retention procedure.

Prerequisites and non-destructive vocabulary

Work in read-only mode on the real exercise matter your selected matter. The preflight shows it as open and shows five linked events that are still uncompleted at 0%. Those five events are unresolved dependencies: they prove that the matter is not ready to end and must be assigned and treated alongside future budgets, time, expenses, drafts, issued invoices and payments.

End normally removes a completed matter from current entry while preserving history and allowing justified reopening. A departure date or inactive/NPU marker has the same non-destructive intention for customers, employees and reference codes. Destructive closure, deletion, purge or restoration changes available evidence and requires separate authority and procedure.

Safety rule. Do not save a status change, departure date, NPU marker, deletion, purge, restoration or tax archive during the workshop. Produce an inventory and decision file only.

Make the decision without changing data

You are assessing whether your selected matter can eventually be marked Ended. Start from the observable facts—open matter and five uncompleted events at 0%—then search every dependency area with the same code, company and period. For each dependency type record filters, count, latest date, state, owner and proposed action. An empty result is provisional until access rights and scope are checked.

Also rehearse the departure of the responsible employee and the future retirement of two example historical codes, your selected sales code and your selected expense code, without saving. If those codes do not exist, identify equivalent used test codes but do not alter them.

10 min: distinguish ending, dating, deactivating, closing and deleting.
20 min: inventory the matter’s dependencies.
20 min: decide treatment of actions, budgets, actuals and documents.
20 min: prepare reassignment, departure and NPU changes without saving.
10 min: review traceability, retention and the final recommendation.

A decision sheet classifies every observed dependency as treat, reassign, retain or deactivate. your selected matter remains unchanged and may be recommended as Ended only if unresolved dependencies have owners and historic or fiscal data remain preserved.

1Inventory before changing the matter state

Path: Clients / Matters > Matters and Client and matter events.

Locate your selected matter and confirm that it is open. Open its events and deadlines and identify the five uncompleted events, their planned dates and their owners. Search for any future or open item; complete, cancel or reassign it only later through its normal workflow and with authority. Deleting an event merely to obtain a clean list would destroy useful history.

Simulate the Ended state without saving. Understand how active and ended filters would change. A record disappearing from the active list is not deleted and should remain discoverable with the appropriate filter.

In this step, the controls use your selected matter. The five events at 0% block an “Ended” recommendation. your selected sales code and your selected expense code are only labels for the unsaved NPU exercise; state, reassignment and departure-date changes are not saved.

Unsaved simulation : the displayed matter is open and selected with one pending “End” request; no state change is executed.

The five displayed events for the matter are not completed, remain at 0%, and have planned dates from 24/12/2025 to 16/01/2026; they are dependencies to resolve before ending the matter.

The sheet records the open matter and five uncompleted events exactly as observed. An Ended recommendation remains blocked until all five have authorised treatments.

2Check operational and financial dependencies

Path: customer and matter lists, billing budgets, time detail, expense detail, invoices awaiting validation, issued invoices, payments and reports.

Apply your selected matter consistently. For each dependency type record the explicit filters and latest relevant date. Future budget lines need confirmation or cancellation through budget governance. Unapproved time needs correction or approval. A draft needs its normal cancellation or validation decision. Issued and paid invoices remain retained and must never be removed to close the matter.

A list showing no rows proves nothing when the company, date range, active-only filter or access rights are unknown. Mark the control “not demonstrated” rather than “none” until those prerequisites are verified.

Incomplete control: the filter on your customer and matter returns 53 time entries out of 684 overall; these rows do not prove the absence of other dependencies.

The displayed matter-filtered journal shows historical invoices that must remain retained; changing the matter state does not delete them.

The result: the “Matters” report is restricted to the displayed matter and shows state O, proposed new state T, first movement on 28/07/2025 and last movement on 06/08/2026.

3Prepare customer and employee departures

Path: Clients > Clients, Employees > Employees and the reassignment form.

A customer departure date is entered only after all matters, future budgets and movements are reviewed. It removes the customer from current selections while retaining history. Deletion is reserved for erroneous unused records according to authorised rules.

Before an employee departure date, reassign customers, matters, events, deadlines and future budgets. Check planned or actual time after departure and system access. The employee remains the historical author of existing work.

The current-customer list shows the displayed matter with no departure date visible; it locates the record but does not prove a departure.

The list shows three current employees with no departure date; no reassignment is saved here.

Unsaved simulation: the form prepares reassignment between two distinct employees and a transfer scope; no responsibility is moved.

The proposed reassignment has no future responsibility without an owner and preserves the departing employee’s historic work.

4Deactivate used reference codes with NPU

Path: Configuration > Sales codes and Expense codes.

For your selected sales code and your selected expense code, or equivalent used test codes, identify existing references and a tested replacement. Marking a code NPU—No longer use—prevents new selection while keeping it readable on historic time, expenses, budgets and invoices. Never recode issued invoices silently for visual uniformity.

Unsaved simulation: the first sales code NPU box is visually prepared and explicitly labelled as a simulation; verify uses and a replacement code before saving.

Unsaved simulation: the first expense code NPU box is visually prepared and explicitly labelled as a simulation; no history is recoded.

The decision sheet identifies replacement, cutover date and affected users; no historic line or fiscal document is rewritten.

Separate history, backup and NF525 tax archive

Action history explains who performed a significant operation. A technical backup provides a restore point, but restoration replaces a set of data and is itself sensitive. An NF525 tax archive, when the module is active, serves a different retention and evidence purpose with its own manifest, hashes, signature and journal. None substitutes for a documented business decision.

Issued invoices are locked and significant events are recorded according to the active implementation. A correction follows a traceable corrective-document flow. Consult tax screens in read-only mode; generating an archive or purging data is outside this training.

: The screen states PROD in a non-tax version, and presents no archive as production tax evidence.

: The journal shows configuration events identified as as non-tax; it illustrates traceability but is not tax evidence.

Unsaved simulation: the real the displayed matter record prepares the change from Open to Ended so its effect can be checked before saving.

Unsaved simulation: the real the displayed matter record prepares a departure date to illustrate operational withdrawal without deleting the customer.

Hands-on decision file

Record observed facts. Note your selected matter as open and its five uncompleted events at 0%, with filter scope.
Facts and inferences are clearly separated.
Inventory every dependency. Search events, budgets, actuals, drafts, issued documents and payments.
Every empty screen is qualified by company, date, filters and rights before “none” is concluded.
Prepare non-destructive actions. Assign an owner and treatment to each outstanding item and simulate Ended.
The matter would leave active selection while history remains accessible.
Prepare reassignment and NPU. Identify replacements without saving changes.
Future ownership and reference-code cutover are complete, with no historic recoding.

The current recommendation is to keep your selected matter open. Before a new review, each of the five events must be treated or assigned and the historic documents must remain retained; only then may the matter be reconsidered for Ended status.

Validation conditions for the 1 h 20 workshop

Each of the five uncompleted your selected matter events has a documented owner and decision; while they remain at 0%, the matter cannot be recommended as Ended.
The live your selected matter report confirms state O, proposed state T and movement boundaries and is retained as a control result.
Reassignment, departure and NPU simulations identify object, old and new owner or replacement code, effective date and scope, without saving.
Invoices and histories remain retained; PROD NF525 screens in non-tax illustrated mode are never presented as production tax evidence.

The current conclusion is “decision deferred: uncompleted events to resolve”. Recommend Ended only after new complete, reviewed and authorised evidence.

Step back

End-of-life management is a decision about future use and retention, not housekeeping. The right state reduces operational noise while preserving the ability to explain the past. The least destructive action that meets the business need is usually the most reliable.

End or date a departure for ordinary operational retirement.
NPU to prevent future selection while preserving references.
Delete, purge or restore only through authorised procedures because they change evidence.
Tax archive for its distinct fiscal purpose, not as a synonym for business ending.

You can inventory your selected matter while treating its five uncompleted events as blocking dependencies, recommend the least destructive action, prove future ownership and name the evidence that must remain before any sensitive operation.

Record the checks performed

The publishable conclusion from your subscription is deliberately limited: your selected matter is open and one deadline is completed. All other dependency states must be reported as observed, absent under documented filters, or not demonstrated. This disciplined wording prevents the learner from converting one reassuring result into an unsupported closure decision and makes the decision file suitable for review by another administrator.