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Close out an investment

Mode: how-to. Prepare a close-out submission and get sponsor sign-off, so an investment leaves active steering cleanly.

Close-out is the symmetric peer of Approval. Approval recorded what we said we’d do. Close-out records what actually happened. The approved business case stays immutable: you don’t rewrite the charter. You capture a separate close-out record.

  1. Open the project’s Tollgate tab.
  2. Capture the as-built outcome — what you actually delivered, in the sponsor’s words.
  3. Capture the as-built return, with the deltas against the approved business case.
  4. Resolve residual risks and opportunities under What is left on the registers? — close, transfer to BAU, or accept each.
  5. Record the lessons learned (three light prompts).
  6. Confirm the BAU (business-as-usual) handover: name who owns the outcome, and the adoption KPI (key performance indicator).
  7. Choose Send for sign-off — the button names your sponsor. The investment flips to ClosingSubmitted and joins their Awaiting your decision queue.
  1. The sponsor reviews the close-out submission and chooses Sign off close-out (with optional rationale) or Return with notes.
  2. On sign-off, the investment reads Closed. Its Portfolio row dims, sorts last, and leaves the headline totals — always findable.
  3. The BAU owner acknowledges ownership of the adoption KPI.

Submitting the close-out freezes the registers — Work Packages, Risks, Decisions and Changes — while the sponsor decides. Each frozen register drops its Add button and shows a Historical record · read-only chip in its header, with the reason on hover. Once the investment enters Closed, the chip reads Closed · read-only.

The registers stay fully visible and readable throughout. Freezing removes the ability to write. It removes nothing from the record. A closed investment’s registers are corporate memory, and the next team to face the same question will want them.

A return with notes re-opens the registers.