November 3, 2026
Post-Season Checklist for Hunting Outfitters: Close This Year, Book the Next
The last client has flown home, and the temptation is to park the truck and leave the office work for January. That delay costs more than it looks like it should, because the details of a hunt fade fast, the clients who just had the best week of their year are at their most willing to rebook, and the balances nobody chased in November are harder to collect in February. Working through this list while the season is still fresh closes out the year and does a good share of next year’s selling for you.
1. Get every hunt on paper
Start with a written record of each hunt before your guides scatter. A guide can tell you exactly how a hunt went this week, but by spring that account has merged with four others. On the Solo plan and up, the End of Hunt Report drafts itself from the field notes your guides already logged, so closing a hunt means correcting a summary instead of writing one from scratch. If you outfit in British Columbia, this one has a clock on it, and Hunt Outfitter tracks your 30-day deadline and reminds you, though you still file with the province yourself.
2. Collect what’s still owed
Open the Payments page and sort out every balance before the year closes. Its aging buckets show outstanding, overdue and collected totals, so you can start with the oldest balance instead of the one you happen to remember. Add-ons, extra days and trophy fees that came up in camp are the usual gaps, because they were agreed over a tailgate and never made it onto an invoice. If you need a refresher on keeping those straight, our guide to invoicing hunting clients covers it.
3. Ask for feedback while the hunt still matters to them
A client’s enthusiasm has a short half-life, so ask within a week or two of the hunt. On Solo and up, Hunt Outfitter can email the feedback request for you a set number of days after each hunt ends, and the rating, highlights and suggestions all land on your dashboard. Read the suggestions as well as the stars, since one quiet complaint about the camp cook or a missed airport pickup is cheaper to fix now than to discover in next year’s reviews. Your happiest clients are also the ones to ask for a public review or a line you can quote, and they rarely object when the request comes in the first week home.
4. File what your state or province requires
Harvest reports, guide logs, client lists and tag returns all run on different deadlines depending on where you operate, and they rarely line up with your calendar. Pull the requirements for each jurisdiction now and put the dates somewhere you’ll see them. If you guide in more than one place, our licensing guides for Colorado, Montana, Idaho and British Columbia are a starting point, though the agency’s own page is the one to trust. On Solo and up, your harvest and compliance records export to CSV, which saves retyping a season’s worth of forms into a state portal.
5. Square up the books and your crew
Log the last of the receipts while you can still find them, then export the season’s expenses and payments for your bookkeeper. Expense tracking and CSV export are on Solo and up, and on Business you can snap a photo of a receipt and let AI read it.
Guides and camp staff need closing out too. If you paid contractors, check your W-9s now rather than in late January. For payments made in 2026, the IRS raised the Form 1099-NEC threshold from $600 to $2,000, and payments made by card or through a payment processor are generally reported on a 1099-K instead. January 31 falls on a Sunday in 2027, so the filing deadline should land on Monday, February 1. Confirm how this applies to you with your accountant, since we’re not giving tax advice here. Our post on crew paperwork covers collecting these forms through the app.
While you’re at it, sit down with each guide for ten minutes. Ask what went wrong, what you should stop doing, and whether they’re coming back, because knowing your roster by December beats finding out in June.
6. Look at what actually sold
Before you set next year’s prices, look at what this year did. Which hunts filled, which weeks sat half empty, where the cancellations came from and which leads never turned into a booking. Every plan from Solo up can export bookings, payments and leads to a spreadsheet, and Business adds Insights, which summarizes bookings, revenue and client feedback over time. Field note insights, also on Business, turns your guides’ daily notes into trends such as which conditions produced and which areas stayed busy, which is hard to see from inside a single week of hunting.
7. Rebook your best clients first
Returning clients are the cheapest bookings you’ll ever make, and many of them decide in the weeks after they get home. Call or email this season’s clients before the prime dates are gone, and tell them you’re holding their week until a set date rather than asking them to think about it. On Business, client trip intelligence puts each client’s past hunts, outcomes and feedback in front of you when you call, and broadcast messaging reaches a whole list at once. Promotional messages only go to people who opted in to receive them, so check your consent before you send.
8. Open next year
A season in Hunt Outfitter is a hunt type in a specific year, with dates and a capacity, and it’s what clients actually book into. Add next year’s seasons as soon as your dates are firm, because a hunt with no active season can’t be booked online. While you’re in there, update your prices and deposit schedule, then review your agreements and waivers for anything this season taught you, especially cancellation terms. Renew your insurance, licenses and land-use permits on their own calendars, and note which ones take months rather than days.
When spring comes around, the pre-season checklist picks up where this one leaves off.
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