--- title: Documentation & Handover | Gudu description: Brand guidelines, CMS how-tos, runbooks and handover docs. Every Gudu project ships with the documentation your team needs to run it without us. canonical: https://gudu.com.au/services/client-services/documentation/ --- # Every project leaves you the manual Whatever we build for you arrives written down: brand guidelines, CMS how-tos, runbooks, handover documents. Clear enough that your team could run it without us. Most clients keep us anyway. **Proof** - 98% client retention (nobody stays because they're stuck) - [Southern Phone](https://gudu.com.au/southernphone/) — client since 2021, across all four of our service lines - [NOVUS Glass](https://gudu.com.au/novus-glass/) — ongoing advertising and client-services partner ## What you get - **Brand guidelines.** Logo usage, colour, type, tone of voice and applied examples, so anyone producing work for your brand — in-house or external — produces it on-brand. - **CMS how-to guides.** Step-by-step instructions, with screenshots, for the updates your team actually makes: publishing a post, swapping an image, editing a page, adding a product. - **Runbooks for recurring operations.** Campaign launches, monthly reporting, EDM sends: the repeatable jobs written as checklists, so they happen the same way whoever runs them. - **An access and ownership register.** Every account, platform, domain and login involved in your digital presence, who owns it, and who administers it. The single document most businesses discover they need at the worst possible moment. - **Project handover documents.** At the close of any build: what was made, how it works, the decisions behind it, and what to watch. Written for your team, not for another agency. - **Measurement definitions.** What each number in your reporting means and where it comes from, so "conversion" means the same thing in every meeting. - **Standalone documentation of existing systems.** We can also document what's already there — including work other agencies built — as its own engagement. ## How we do it 1. **We document while we build, not after.** The person doing the work writes it up as they go: Mark Hebblewhite, our Design Specialist, writes the brand guidelines alongside the identity work; Joseph Arboleda, our Digital Media Specialist, records the media account setup as he configures it. Nothing gets reconstructed from memory months later. 2. **Written in plain English, for the person who'll use it.** A CMS guide is written for the marketing coordinator making the edit, not for a developer. Jargon gets a one-line explanation or gets cut. 3. **Stored in your systems, owned by you.** Docs live in your Google Workspace, your drive, your Figma — under your accounts, with Gudu as a collaborator. If we ever part ways, there's nothing to hand back. 4. **Handed over in person, not dropped in a folder.** Tony Ellis, our Customer Success Manager, runs a walkthrough with the people who'll use the docs: a live session, plus screen recordings they can replay later. He takes questions until there aren't any. 5. **Kept current.** When a process changes, its document changes in the same piece of work. We review the set with you at renewal, because documentation that's drifted from reality is worse than none. ## Case study: Southern Phone Southern Phone came to us in 2021 for a paid-media rescue. The rebuild took $22 off account CPA, and they backed the result with 68% more spend. The engagement then grew across advertising, creative, technology and client services. Five years on, the account runs on documented process rather than institutional memory, and Southern Phone owns every platform, file and login involved. They could walk out with everything tomorrow. They renew instead. > "Their expert planning, creative thinking coupled with their excellent communication skills and on time execution with every results-driven campaign make it a pleasure to work with this team." — Jacqueline Jansse, Southern Phone [Read the Southern Phone case study](https://gudu.com.au/southernphone/) ## FAQ **What documentation comes standard with a Gudu project?** Every project closes with a written handover: what was built, how to operate it, and who owns each account involved. Beyond that, it depends on the work — identity projects produce brand guidelines, website builds produce CMS how-tos, media engagements produce account documentation and measurement definitions. The scope document lists the artefacts up front, so you know what you'll be holding before the project starts. **Can you document systems Gudu didn't build?** Yes, as a standalone engagement. We audit what exists (website, ad accounts, analytics, brand assets), interview the people who run it, and produce the guides, runbooks and access register your team is missing. It's common after staff turnover or an agency change, when the knowledge walked out the door and nobody wrote it down. We scope it after a short discovery call. **Who owns the documentation?** You do, without qualification. Everything is created in or moved to accounts you control, with Gudu added as a collaborator for as long as we're engaged. We don't hold documents hostage as a retention device, and we don't watermark process docs to stop you using them without us. Ownership that reverts on exit isn't ownership. **Doesn't documenting everything make it easy for clients to leave?** That's the point. Documentation removes the worst reason to stay with an agency — being trapped — and leaves the only reason we're interested in: the work. Our client retention is 98%, and none of it comes from clients who couldn't leave. It also makes the day-to-day better while we're engaged, because your team and ours run off the same written process. **What does documentation cost?** Within a project, it doesn't cost extra — handover docs, guidelines and how-tos are part of the scoped deliverable, itemised in the proposal. Standalone documentation of an existing setup is quoted as a fixed fee after discovery, priced on the number of systems and processes to cover. Either way you'll see it as its own line, not folded into an hourly blur. **How do you keep documentation from going stale?** Updating the document is part of changing the process — when we alter a workflow, campaign structure or template, the doc changes in the same piece of work, not in a someday cleanup. At renewal we review the full set with you and flag anything that's drifted. If your own team changes something, the docs are in your systems and written plainly enough to edit yourselves. ## Related services - [Client Services](https://gudu.com.au/services/client-services/) — up a level, all our client services - [Content Management](https://gudu.com.au/services/client-services/content-management/) — ongoing website and content updates - [Project Management](https://gudu.com.au/services/client-services/project-management/) — project management across campaigns and builds - [Process Improvement](https://gudu.com.au/services/client-services/process-improvement/) — process improvement for marketing teams - [Identity](https://gudu.com.au/services/creative/identity/) — brand identity and the guidelines that protect it - [Web Development](https://gudu.com.au/services/technology/web-development/) — website design and build with a documented handover [Let's talk](https://gudu.com.au/contact/)