Equipping your business that can continue without you
By Ben Cobussen
September 2026
We all know that leaving a cake in the oven for too long will eventually spell disaster. No matter how good the ingredients are or how carefully it was prepared, leave it unattended for too long and it will burn, leaving you with something disappointing and likely unusable.
And yet we often see businesses treated the same way. They run smoothly and produce fantastic results. But if what makes them so successful stays inside the head of one key person, we are tempting fate in the same way as the proverbial cake. What happens if that person is no longer around or becomes incapacitated? What happens when we don’t have them to call on?
These questions are often avoided because they are difficult to consider, but as the saying goes – “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”. As accountants, we have seen businesses (and families) lose someone who held the keys to success in their minds, never recording it in any external way. And when the worst happens, the people around them are left struggling to keep things running. But it doesn’t have to be this way!
What goes into a Continuation Plan?
These plans can be as large or as small as you like – you know best what is required to keep your business running. You might include things like;
A list of bank accounts and investments held by the business
A monthly/annual workflow showing all of your obligations and payments that need to be kept
Key relationships with either suppliers or valuable customers that are important to maintain
A list of policies or critical knowledge that your business utilises to maintain a high standard of quality/competitive advantage
Continuation plans also don’t have to be limited to your business – even within our own families we have things we are good at and things we find difficult, and we often divide responsibilities accordingly. Developing your own personal continuation plan means that if something happens to you, a family member won’t be left trying to learn new skills on top of everything else.
Your personal continuation plan might include;
A collection of passwords and logins
A list of bills to pay including payment amounts, due dates and payment methods
Contact details for trusted professionals and household contacts
Plan care, contacts and emergency handover arrangements for children or other dependants
Where do I begin?
Your continuation plan doesn’t have to look a certain way – you can design it in whatever template makes the most sense for your family. The important thing is to have these conversations sooner rather than later and to include as much information as possible to make a difficult scenario a little more bearable for those you care about. The hardest step to take is usually the first!
A possible path forward for you might be;
Put together a draft list now of the information you would like to include in your continuation plan.
Book some time (or times) in your calendar, whether by yourself or with family, to work through each of the things on your list. This doesn’t have to be a chore – do it over a lunch or with some snacks at home!
Save your plan to a USB or print it out (offline is preferable) and store it somewhere safe.
Once you have a plan coming together, don’t forget the most important part – tell someone where it is! You want to ensure you keep this private data safe, but make sure at least one person knows where it is kept so that it isn’t lost before it’s needed.
Let us help
Of course, we understand that it’s not always easy to have these conversations – or to even know where to begin. Here at Lincolns, we are putting together a service to help instigate and direct these conversations, to assist you in ensuring your business can continue if something were to happen to you. Keep an eye out for our webinar over the next few months to see how we can help!
