Offboarding needs separate decisions about access, data, ownership and billing. Deleting an account is one possible platform action; it does not establish that files, integrations, administrator roles and retained records have been handled correctly.

Start with the organization’s approved process and the authority of the people carrying it out. This guide supplies a documentation structure, not instructions to act on an actual employee account.

Keep the completion gates separate

Gate Evidence to record
Access Which accounts and authentication paths were reviewed, and the approved revocation state
Data What must be retained or transferred and where the authorized recipient can access it
Ownership New owner of critical workspaces, assets and integrations
Billing License/subscription decisions and their timing
Verification Responsible person, actual platform result and unresolved dependencies

Avoid a single checkbox labeled account deleted. It can conceal a lost sole administrator or data that nobody else can reach.

The platform examples show different actions

Microsoft’s former-employee overview separates blocking sign-in, securing data, making email/OneDrive content available to others and license/account actions. Their requirements depend on the organization’s actual configuration and permissions.

Google Workspace’s archive guidance describes retaining an account’s data while preventing service access. Archived data still counts toward pooled storage. Archiving therefore addresses a different state from simply deleting the user, and its availability and licensing implications need checking.

Slack’s deactivation guidance makes the administrator’s role relevant and requires primary ownership transfer before that owner can be deactivated. Deactivation also does not delete profile information. The visible account state is not evidence that every content and ownership question has disappeared.

Identify dependencies before destructive steps

List workspaces where the person is the only administrator or primary owner. List files, shared services and integrations that depend on their identity. Assign authorized recipients and verify the supported transfer route before an action that can remove access to the asset.

Keep organization retention decisions with the approved policy. A generic software article cannot supply the correct legal retention period or decide which messages an employer should retain.

The record should explain why each platform action was selected and what other gates remain. Some content or ownership transfers may follow a particular account-state change; follow the platform’s actual sequence rather than imposing one order on every service.

Verify the outcome without collecting passwords

Use the authorized administrator’s documented tools and evidence. Record the account or asset, the action/result and the new responsible owner. A user’s password is not an offboarding artifact to gather.

Review related third-party apps and integrations under the organization’s process. A primary platform account changing state does not, by itself, prove that every separately managed access path was resolved.

Research method

We compared current Microsoft, Google and Slack documentation on October 11, 2026. No accounts, data or licenses were changed or tested. The original asset is the five-gate record, which makes unfinished dependencies visible without prescribing an unsupported universal deletion workflow.

Sources