# Set up the retirement book

> If your company has a retirement program, design the retirement book in Recognition → Service milestone → Retirement. Colleagues are invited to write about four weeks before an employee retires, and the employee gets the book a week before.

- Product: Recognition › Service milestones
- Who can do this: Admins who can manage service milestones
- Plan: Recognition
- Where: Admin dashboard
- Last checked: 15 Oct 2026
- Web page: https://www.vantagecircle.com/en/help/recognition/service-milestones/set-up-the-retirement-book/

The retirement book is a yearbook for employees who retire. Colleagues write farewell messages, and the retiring employee gets them as a book. There's one book design for the whole company. This only runs if your company has a retirement program, which Vantage Circle sets up.

## Design the book

1. Go to **Recognition → Service milestone** and open the **Retirement** tab.
2. Select **Set up retirement book**, or **Edit retirement book** if the book is already set up. If no program is listed yet, select **Set up the retirement book**.
3. On the **Retirement book** step, set the cover, text style and content. It works like the service yearbook, with three differences:
   - The **Back cover message** is required, up to 700 characters.
   - If you turn on **Include leadership messages**, every leader needs a **Name**, a **Job title**, a **Message** and a photo. Names and job titles can be up to 50 characters.
   - There are no employee stories. The book holds messages from leaders, colleagues and the employee's manager. **Show the employee's manager message first** puts the manager's message at the front.
4. Select **View sample yearbook** to check the design.
5. If your company offers retirement catalogs, a **Reward catalog** step follows. Turn on **Enable a catalog for retirement** to choose specific gifts a retiring employee can pick, one country at a time. Leave it off and they choose from the full rewards catalog.
6. Select **Save changes**. You'll see "Retirement book saved".

The table on the **Retirement** tab then shows **Book ready**. The program name and its **Reward points** are set for your company and can't be changed here.

For the cover and leader fields, see [Set up the service yearbook](/en/help/recognition/service-milestones/set-up-the-service-yearbook/). For catalogs, see [Set up a milestone catalog](/en/help/recognition/service-milestones/set-up-a-milestone-catalog/).

## What happens next

By default, the timing counts back from the retirement date in each employee's record. Some companies have a different group of invited colleagues.

- **About four weeks (28 days) before:** everyone in the company gets an email inviting them to share their thoughts for the retiring colleague. The subject starts "Share your thoughts on Retirement for" and the employee's name.
- **21 and 14 days before:** reminder emails go out.
- **7 days before:** the retirement points are added, and the employee gets an email with the book attached as a PDF. Their reporting manager is copied.

An employee who has turned off retirement posts in their profile isn't included.

## If something goes wrong

- **"Add the back cover message."** Write a back cover message. It's required for the retirement book.
- **"Add a message, name, job title and photo for leader 2."** Fill in every field for that leader, or remove the leader.
- **"Retirement book saved, but reward catalog not saved"** Open the book again with **Edit retirement book** and save the catalog again.
- **"Retirement program could not be loaded."** Reload the page and try again.