Optimal Women in Business

Build your reminder schedule

Enter the date of your year-end planning meeting. Everything else counts backward and forward from it.

Aim for late October to mid-November — after your CPA clears the October 15 extension deadline, with eight or nine weeks still left before December 31.

19 reminders · 13 blocks of held time

Nineteen reminders, timed to your date. Import instructions are below.

Want the workbook to take into the meeting?

The reminders tell you when. The workbook is what you actually sit down with — a timed agenda, the questions to ask, and a decision record you fill in during the meeting so nothing leaves the room without a date on it.

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How to import this into your calendar

Import into a new calendar of its own, not your main one. Nineteen events go in at once — if the date turns out wrong, deleting one calendar takes a second, and deleting nineteen events one at a time does not.

Google Calendar

Only possible on a computer. The Google Calendar mobile app has no import function.

  1. Open Google Calendar in a browser. Click the gear icon, then Settings.
  2. In the left menu, click Add calendar, then Create new calendar. Name it Year-End Planning and click Create calendar.
  3. Back in the left menu, click Import & export.
  4. Under Import, click Select file from your computer and choose the file you downloaded.
  5. In the Add to calendar box, choose Year-End Planning, then click Import.

Google confirms how many events it imported. If it is not nineteen, delete the calendar and try again.

Apple Calendar on a Mac

  1. Open Calendar. Choose File, then New Calendar, and name it Year-End Planning under iCloud.
  2. Choose File, then Import, and select the downloaded file.
  3. When asked where to put the events, choose Year-End Planning and click OK.

Apple Calendar on iPhone or iPad

  1. In the Calendar app, tap Calendars, then Add Calendar, and name it Year-End Planning under iCloud.
  2. Find the downloaded file in the Files app and tap it. All nineteen events appear.
  3. Scroll to the bottom and tap Add All.
  4. Choose Year-End Planning — an iCloud calendar, not one stored only on the device, or the reminders will not follow you to your other devices.

Outlook — the new app, or Outlook on the web

  1. Go to Calendar. In the left pane, click Add calendar, then Create blank calendar, and name it Year-End Planning.
  2. Click Add calendar again, then Upload from file.
  3. Click Browse, select the downloaded file, and click Open.
  4. Under Select a calendar, choose Year-End Planning, then click Import.

New Outlook can only import into a calendar that already exists, which is why step one comes first. Double-clicking the file does nothing until the Calendar view is open.

Outlook — the classic desktop app

If your Outlook has a File menu containing Open & Export, this is the version you have.

  1. Choose File, then Open & Export, then Import/Export.
  2. Select Import an iCalendar (.ics) or vCalendar file, then Next.
  3. Select the downloaded file and click OK.
  4. Choose Open as New Calendar to keep the events separate, or Import to merge them into your main calendar.

Four things to check afterward

  1. Open one event and confirm the time reads correctly. The file carries no time zone on purpose, so nine in the morning stays nine in the morning wherever you are.
  2. Confirm the two yearly repeats survived — booking the meeting, and the December 1 review. Some importers drop recurrence.
  3. Check that alerts came through. Held time alerts thirty minutes ahead; short items alert at the start.
  4. Move anything that landed badly. These are suggestions about when, not rules.