Free opening and closing checklist

About this document

An opening and closing checklist writes the store's daily routine down so it stops living in one person's head — every task, who did it, initialed. Its value shows up the first morning the usual opener calls in sick.

When to use it

• Daily, as the working copy of the routine.
• Training new staff — the list is the trainer.
• Multiple closers whose versions of "how we close" have drifted apart.

Getting it right

• Order tasks the way the store is physically walked — a list that jumps around gets abandoned by Wednesday.
• Initials over checkmarks: knowing who did what turns "the safe wasn't locked" from an argument into a follow-up.
• Prune quarterly; dead tasks lingering on the list train staff to skip lines.

It's the routine on paper — incident reporting, cash-handling policy and alarm procedures deserve their own instructions, not rows here.

Part of Keep the store stocked — the whole situation, connected.

Common questions

One combined list or separate open/close sheets?

The shift field supports either — one sheet per shift keeps the paper simple, and the label says which routine ran.

How long should the list be?

Short enough to actually happen on a slammed morning. Past roughly twenty items, split it.

Where do completed sheets go?

A clipboard archive or a photo in a shared folder — anywhere a manager can flip back when something surfaces later.