Open your standard service agreement and find the clause explaining what happens to the client's file once the work is finished.
It is there, because the Code of Conduct requires it. Section 42(3)(e) says a service agreement must include an explanation of what will happen to the client's file if the agreement is terminated, and on completion of the work. Every compliant agreement in your practice already contains a promise about closure.
The question is whether anything in your practice performs it.
Completion and termination are different events
This distinction carries more weight than any other in a closure process, and the Code makes it explicitly.
The definitions section says that a reference to a service agreement being terminated does not include a reference to the agreement being brought to an end by the fulfilment of the obligations under it. A matter that finishes normally — visa granted, advice delivered, work complete — is not a termination.
That matters because the Code's termination machinery is triggered by termination, not by completion. Section 57's written notice, with its status update, its allocation details and its client-money statement, applies when an agreement is terminated. It is not the checklist for a matter that simply finished.
Section 45 draws the same line from the other direction: a responsible migration agent must take all reasonable steps to ensure the work specified in the agreement is completed — and that duty ceases to apply if the agreement is terminated.
Two exits, two sets of provisions. A single "close matter" button that treats them identically will over-notify on one and under-notify on the other.
What completion switches on
Finishing the work does not end your obligations. It changes which of them are running.
The retention clock starts, and it moves
The Code requires you to take all reasonable steps to ensure the client file is kept for seven years after the last action on the file for that client.
Read the trigger carefully. It is not seven years from the grant, the final invoice, or the day you marked the matter closed. It is the last action — so a file you touch again in year three has a retention date in year ten. A destruction date stamped at closure and never recalculated is the most common way practices destroy files early. We cover the mechanics in our guide to client file retention.
The correspondence duty outlives the matter
Section 58 is the provision closure checklists miss, because it only bites after the file is shut.
If you cease to be a client's agent and later receive correspondence from a government official addressed to that client — or sent to you because the sender believed you were still acting — you must take all reasonable steps to forward it on, to the former client or to their current agent.
The duty is not open-ended, but the way it ends is the point. It stops applying only to correspondence received more than 28 days after you give written notice to the Department, or to a review authority with a matter pending, that you have ceased to act.
The clock does not start when you close the file. It starts when you tell the Department. Close a matter without sending that notice and the forwarding duty runs on indefinitely — attached to a file nobody is watching, arriving in an inbox nobody checks.
Money has to be finished, not merely invoiced
Three provisions have to be satisfied before the money side of a matter is genuinely closed.
Every charge needs an itemised invoice first. Section 49 prohibits charging a client for work or a disbursement unless the client is given an itemised invoice containing details of what the fee relates to, and requires a receipt identifying the work and the invoice once payment is made. The invoice precedes the charge. It is not a record of it.
Taking your fee is a regulated act. Section 50 permits money to leave the account holding client money to pay you — but expressly not where section 313 of the Migration Act says you are not entitled to be paid. That section withholds entitlement until the client has a statement of services setting out each service performed and the charge for it. Sweeping a final balance across without that statement is not an accounting shortcut; it is a withdrawal the Code does not authorise.
Unspent money goes back on a clock. Section 52 requires a fair and reasonable refund policy in the agreement, sufficient funds available to cover refunds, and payment of any refund promptly and in any case no later than 14 days after it becomes payable. A residual balance sitting in the client account because the matter finished and nobody asked is already late.
Our practical guide to trust accounting covers the account rules these obligations sit on.
Documents: what leaves, and what has to stay
Two provisions pull in opposite directions, and both apply at closure.
Section 53 requires documents belonging or relating to a client or former client, held by you or by anyone in your business, to be kept securely. Note the reach: it does not lapse when the client does, and it is not confined to the file in your own cabinet.
Section 54 requires you to return all documents to which the client is entitled within 14 days of a written request — from the client, a former client, or a new registered migration agent acting for them. Documents the client is entitled to include anything given to you by or on behalf of the client, and anything paid for by or on behalf of them.
Two details are worth pinning down, because both are commonly misremembered from the former Code:
- The request must be in writing, and the period is 14 days. The old Code's oral request and seven-day turnaround are gone.
- A lien is realistically not available to you. Section 54(2) permits one only where the agent is a restricted legal practitioner who is eligible — and a person cannot be registered as a migration agent at all if they are an unrestricted legal practitioner, or a restricted one who is not eligible. For most RMAs that closes the question: an unpaid invoice does not entitle you to hold a client's documents.
There is also a closure task hiding in the record-keeping provisions. The client file must include evidence of the safe return of any original documents belonging to the client. Handing the passport back is not the end of the task. Recording that you did is.
The record you are closing
Section 56(2) sets out what the file must contain, and the list is wider than most closure checklists test against:
- a copy of the client's application or other immigration matter
- copies of all service agreements and any variations
- copies of all written communications, expressly including electronic ones, between you and the client, and between you and anyone else to the extent the communication relates to the client
- your contemporaneous records of oral communications with the client, required separately by section 55
- records of material oral communications with third parties about the client
- copies of all invoices and receipts
- copies of all personal documents the client gave you
- evidence of the safe return of originals
Two of those are where audits find gaps. The third-party oral record — the call to the case officer, the conversation with a sponsor — belongs on the file as much as the client call does. And the written-communication limb is not confined to formal letters; our guide to file note requirements covers what a defensible record looks like day to day.
The file may be kept in written or electronic form, or partly both, and a single file may cover two or more clients in the same family unit unless one of them asks for their own.
A closure sequence you could defend
- Confirm the work is complete against the agreement, not against memory. Section 45 measures completion by the services specified in the service agreement.
- Tell the client in writing and give them a copy of anything lodged. Section 39 requires this as you go; closure is where you confirm nothing is outstanding.
- Notify the Department or review authority that you have ceased to act, and record the date — that date starts the 28-day limit on the forwarding duty.
- Finish the money: statement of services, itemised invoice, receipt, refund of any residue within 14 days, and only then any transfer to your own account.
- Return originals and record the return as a file item in its own right.
- Set the retention date to seven years from the last action, and make it recalculate rather than sit as a static field.
- Keep confidentiality running. Section 35 covers a client or former client, so closure changes nothing about who may see the file.
The five-file closure test
Take five recently closed matters and answer without hunting:
- Is there a written notice to the Department on each file, and a date?
- Was every fee preceded by an itemised invoice and followed by a receipt?
- Is there a statement of services covering everything you were paid?
- Does the file record the safe return of originals?
- Is the retention date keyed to the last action, and has it moved when the file moved?
- If the client asked for their documents tomorrow, could you meet 14 days without a scramble?
Anything you cannot answer in two minutes is what an audit finds first.
Where a system helps
Closure fails quietly. Nobody decides to skip the Department notice or leave $400 sitting in the client account. The steps simply lose their owner once the interesting work is done.
The controls that fix it are unglamorous: a closure step that will not complete until the notice date is recorded, a refund that raises itself when a balance survives the final invoice, a retention date that recalculates whenever the file is touched, and correspondence that lands on the matter rather than in one person's inbox.
LodgeHQ is built so the compliant action is the default action. Start a free trial and make closure something your practice performs rather than remembers.
Verify before you rely on it
The Code changed substantially on 1 March 2022, and material published before then — including guidance still circulating in the profession — uses a numbering scheme and several rules that no longer apply. Before you rewrite a closure procedure, read the current text: the Code of Conduct as prescribed, the Regulations on the Federal Register, and OMARA's guidance on practice management duties.
This is general information for migration practices, not legal advice. Where a specific file raises a question — a disputed balance, a client demanding documents, a matter that ended badly — get advice on that file.