--- title: "How to offboard SaaS accounts when someone leaves" description: "Remove a leaver's seats, shared logins and SSO access in order, keep their data with an owner, and put the freed licenses to work or cancel them." canonical: "https://lopifi.com/savings/how-to/offboard-saas-accounts" --- # How to offboard SaaS accounts when someone leaves > Remove a leaver's seats, shared logins and SSO access in order, keep their data with an owner, and put the freed licenses to work or cancel them. Source: https://lopifi.com/savings/how-to/offboard-saas-accounts Part of: Lopifi — US GAAP books on autopilot, checked by a CPA (https://lopifi.com) --- Series: Move and replace. Reviewed 2026-10-25. When a person leaves, three things continue: their access, their seats, and their data. Access is a risk, seats are a cost, and data is work someone still needs. Offboarding done in order handles all three and also leaves an updated list for the next audit. ## Start from the list, not from memory Keep one sheet of what each person has access to: the suite, chat, project tools, design, code hosting, and any vendor on the [audit checklist](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/software-spend-audit-checklist) with seats. Every row has an owner, and the owner of the tool does the removal in it. A leaver's checklist is that sheet filtered to one person. ## The order 1. **Stop access.** Block sign-in to the main suite first, and sign out active sessions. If you use single sign-on, disabling the person there removes access to every app that sits behind it at once. Apps that do not use SSO need their own removal. 2. **Shared logins.** Rotate any shared login the person knew, and move it into your password manager under a named owner. Check for personal accounts used for work: a tool the company pays for, signed up with a personal email, is easy to leave behind. 3. **Move the data to an owner.** Decide who now owns the person's mail, files and calendar, and move them before any deletion. Microsoft's guide for former employees puts this ahead of deleting the account: it describes forwarding the person's email or converting it to a shared mailbox, and giving another person access to OneDrive and Outlook content. Google's help says data that is not transferred is deleted and that some of it is kept for 20 days; a super admin can move some data during deletion, and other admins must move it beforehand. 4. **Free the licenses.** Remove the person's seat in each paid tool, or reassign it to a new hire. On a per-seat plan, an unused seat is a recurring charge for nobody. Microsoft's guide notes that a removed license can be assigned to someone else or deleted if you do not need it. 5. **Delete last.** Only after the data has an owner and the grace period has been used, delete the account. Both Google and Microsoft describe a window after deletion to restore the account, but treat deletion as final. 6. **Record it.** Update the sheet and note any seat count that changed, for the next audit. ## Data ownership This is general information, not legal advice. Retention depends on your contracts and the law where you operate. - Work files belong to the company; make sure they live where the company controls them, not in a personal account. - Keep what a retention rule, contract or legal hold requires. Microsoft's guide mentions applying legal holds to departing employees for legal or compliance needs; talk to counsel before deleting anything under a hold. - For several departures at once, Google's help points to its Data Export tool as an alternative to deleting users one by one. - If an account is removed and nobody owned its data, the data is gone after the retention window. The window is the reason to name an owner first. ## Reassigning and cutting seats For each freed seat, one of two things happens: it goes to a new hire, or the seat count drops. A count that only goes up is [per-seat creep](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/software-spend-audit-checklist), and offboarding is where it starts. Some vendors only let you lower seats at renewal, so put the date in the calendar when you remove the person, not when the invoice arrives. ## Common questions ### What order should we remove a leaver in? Sign-in first, data second, license third, deletion last. Blocking access stops the risk at once. Moving data to a named owner keeps work from disappearing. Freeing the license saves money. Deleting the account is permanent, so it comes after the others. ### Is there a deadline to save someone's files? Yes. The email suite's retention windows are short. Microsoft's help says a deleted user's OneDrive and Outlook content is kept for 30 days, and Google's says some data is kept for 20 days. Move what matters to a named owner before you delete, not after. ### What about logins that more than one person knows? Change the password and rotate whatever it protects, then move the login into your password manager under a named owner. Shared logins are what offboarding most often misses, because no one account holds them. ### Do we get the money back for the leaver's seat? Only if the vendor allows reassigning seats mid-term. On a per-seat plan it often does; on a fixed-term contract it may not. Check the terms, as in the cancelling guide, and reassign the seat or reduce the count at renewal. ## Sources - [Google Workspace Admin Help: delete or remove a user from your organization](https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/users/delete-or-remove-a-user-from-your-organization) (read 2026-10-25) - [Microsoft Learn: remove a former employee](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/add-users/remove-former-employee?view=o365-worldwide) (read 2026-10-25) ## Keep going - [Cutting unused seats](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/cut-unused-seats): Find inactive seats in your admin consoles, downgrade roles, and understand true-downs, per-seat versus usage billing, and mid-term credits. - [Software approval policy](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/software-approval-policy): A one-page software approval policy a ten-person company can adopt: who may buy, card and trial rules, an owner per tool, and a checklist. - [Dropbox migration, in depth](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/dropbox-migration): A start-to-finish plan for leaving Dropbox: inventory, destination, pilot, copy and verify, shared links, cutover, cancellation and how the books treat it. - [Open-source licenses for founders](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to/open-source-licenses): MIT, Apache, MPL, GPL and AGPL in plain English for founders who run open-source software instead of paying a license, and what each asks you to do. - [Run the free audit](https://lopifi.com/savings/audit) - [All how-to guides](https://lopifi.com/md/savings/how-to) *General information, not tax, legal or accounting advice.*