💰📅 End of Financial Year Roundup
Celebrate the close of another financial year! Let's audit our wins, assess any accounting errors, and forecast ways to balance our workflow books even better next time. Tally up your insights—let’s make next year even more profitable!
Template Columns
📈 Profitable Gains
Highlight our biggest wins and completed goals that gave our 'books' a boost this year.
Base column: What Went Well🧾 Missed Reconciliations
Identify any slip-ups, missed targets, or budget overruns that didn’t balance as planned.
Base column: What Went Wrong🔮 Future Investments
Suggest improvements and strategic changes for even better returns in the coming year.
Base column: What We Want to ImproveAbout this template
The End of Financial Year Roundup retrospective helps teams review wins, acknowledge gaps, and surface improvement ideas with a financial year lens, making it perfect for annual reflections.
When to use this template
Use this format at the close of the financial year or major fiscal milestones to capture lessons, celebrate achievements, and plan for more effective future periods.
How to facilitate
Welcome the team and set the context by acknowledging the end of the financial year and the retrospective's goals
Frame psychological safety, encouraging honesty about successes and setbacks
Give everyone 5-10 minutes to add notes in the Profitable Gains, Missed Reconciliations, and Future Investments columns
Invite participants to review the board, reading out highlights or clarifying items as needed
Group similar or related notes together as a team, and allow clarifying questions
Guide a discussion on key themes for each column, focusing on root causes and learnings
Collaboratively prioritize actionable improvement items from Future Investments to bring into the next year's planning
Close by celebrating team achievements and summarizing major takeaways with next steps
Pro Tips
Frame financial successes in terms of team behaviors and processes, not just results, for richer discussion
If budgets or targets were missed, steer the focus toward learning and future prevention rather than blame
Keep the retrospective grounded in high-level trends instead of getting lost in individual transactions or minor events
Encourage team members from both business and technical backgrounds to share their perspectives for a holistic review
FAQ
What if some missed targets feel sensitive to discuss?
Acknowledge these topics up front and create space for open, blame-free exploration to focus on growth, not fault.
How do we ensure action on improvement ideas?
Review Future Investments items as a group and assign ownership or include them in the planning for the upcoming year.
Can this template work for non-financial teams?
Yes, the structure applies to any team or project that works in annual cycles or wants to think in terms of tangible returns and goals.
At a glance
- Duration
45–60 min
- Team Size
4-12 people
- Columns
3 columns
- Base Format
What Went Well, What Went Wrong, What We Want to Improve
Tags
Ready to get started?
Use this template to run your next retrospective