Closing is a thing that can be done well, and doing it well is worth more than most people realise. It protects your staff, it protects your credit and your name, and it protects your ability to start something else later. Owners who close carefully go on to do other things. Owners who walk away and leave it open spend years dealing with the remains.

The practical reason to follow a sequence is specific: a business that stops trading but is never formally closed keeps accruing obligations. Filings keep coming due, fees keep adding up, and the first you hear of it may be a notice years later. The work below is mostly a fortnight of admin, and it ends the matter.

Speak to an accountant and, if there are debts or a lease, an attorney, before you announce anything. The order of what you do affects what you owe, and some of the choices narrow once the first step is taken.

Write the order down before you start telling people. Staff first, then creditors and landlord, then customers, then agencies. Finding out from a customer is the thing people remember.