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.
Move and replace · guide 3 of 7 · Reviewed Oct 25, 2026
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Update the sheet and note any seat count that changed, for the next audit.
This is general information, not legal advice. Retention depends on your contracts and the law where you operate.
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, 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.
Send us the export and see which lines are worth a second look. A connected version is planned.