Back up in two places and prepare the submission package early

Laptops get stolen, drives fail and power cuts corrupt files, usually in the final week. Keep the report and code in at least two places, such as the cloud tool or Git host plus a copy on a separate drive.

Find out early what the final submission needs. Departments often ask for more than the PDF. The University of Lahore's Islamabad campus guidelines, for example, ask for bound copies plus a disc with the report in Word and PDF, the source code, the plagiarism report, and the requirements and design documents.

Prepare a checklist a week before the deadline:

• Final PDF with fonts embedded, checked page by page.
• Source code archive or repository link, with a README to run it.
• Similarity report, if your department asks you to attach it.
• Signed declarations and approval pages.