Offboarding Someone

Somebody leaving touches more of the system than somebody joining, and it is easier to get wrong — because most of the work is stopping things rather than starting them, and nothing prompts you.

Resignation or termination

The system separates the two, and the distinction is deliberate:

Resignation	The employee chose to leave. Recorded under Employee Lifecycle → Resignations
Termination	The organization ended it. Recorded under Employee Lifecycle → Terminations

Record it in the right place. These are the permanent record of how somebody’s employment ended, and they are exactly the records that get looked at later.

Terminations have consequences beyond this system

A termination record is an employment-law document. Follow your organization’s process — notice, documentation, whatever sign-off is required — before creating one. The system will let you record anything; that does not make it correct.

If you are unsure, ask before recording, not after.

The offboarding sequence

1. Record the resignation or termination, with the notice date, the last working day, and the reason.

2. Approve the outstanding leave queue for them. Anything still pending will otherwise sit unresolved forever, and unapproved days count as absent against their final pay.

3. Decide about remaining leave balance. Whether unused leave is paid out is your organization’s policy. Check the balance now, while you can still act on it.

4. Collect the equipment. Check their equipment under Asset Management → Assets and mark each item returned as you get it back.

   This is the step most often missed, and the one that surfaces months later when somebody audits the asset list.

5. Include them in their final payroll run before changing anything that would exclude them. Their last month still needs paying.

6. Issue leaving documents if your organization provides them — an experience certificate, a relieving letter, a final payslip.

7. Revoke their access. Once they have gone and payroll is settled, their account should no longer sign in.

Sequence matters more here than anywhere else

Two orderings cause most of the trouble:

Do not revoke access before the final payroll. If their record is disabled or their status changed before the run, they can be excluded from it — and you will be arranging a manual payment.

Do not close the leave and attendance queues after the final run. Same rule as any payroll: anything pending at processing time is not in the numbers, and this is the last chance to get it right.

An offboarding checklist

Done	Step
☐	Resignation or termination recorded, with last working day
☐	All pending leave requests resolved
☐	All pending regularizations resolved
☐	Leave balance checked and policy applied
☐	Equipment collected and marked returned
☐	Final payroll run includes them
☐	Final payslip issued
☐	Leaving documents issued
☐	Access revoked — after payroll, not before
☐	Contract closed

What to keep

Do not delete the employee record. Their attendance, leave and payslips are the evidence of what happened, and organizations are usually obliged to keep them for years.

Offboarding means marking somebody as no longer employed. It does not mean erasing them.

If they might come back

Keep the old record as the history of that period of employment. If they rejoin, create a new record — see Onboarding an Employee. Two clean periods are far easier to explain later than one record with a gap in it.

Common questions

Somebody left without notice. Record it with the dates that actually happened. The record should reflect reality, not what should have happened.

Do I delete their login? Revoke access rather than deleting the person. The record needs to survive; the ability to sign in does not.

They still show in the employee list. Check their employment status — a leaver should not be listed as active. Filter by status on the Employees screen to see who is genuinely current.

They kept a laptop. Leave the asset assigned and record what happened. Marking it returned when it was not makes the asset list wrong, which is worse than an awkward open item.

Their final payslip looks short. Check unpaid or unapproved days first, then whether their leave payout was applied. Both are ordering problems, and both are in the checklist above.