Employee offboarding checklist: accounts, equipment and final pay

Onboarding gets a plan because everyone is excited about the new hire. Offboarding usually gets an email from HR that says "Jordan's last day is Friday", and then everyone assumes someone else will handle it.

The result shows up weeks later: a laptop that never came back, a former employee who can still log in to the CRM, a final paycheck that missed the state deadline, or a COBRA notice nobody sent.

Key takeaways

• Every offboarding task needs one owner and a date, exactly like onboarding.
• Remove access at the end of the last day, not "next week". Shared passwords and admin accounts are the ones people forget.
• There is no federal rule requiring an immediate final paycheck, but many states set their own deadlines, and some are very short.
• If you have a group health plan and 20 or more employees, the COBRA notice clock starts at the qualifying event.

This employee offboarding checklist covers the whole exit, from the resignation letter to the records you have to keep afterward. It is written for US employers and uses federal rules, with a few state examples. It is not legal advice: final pay and benefits rules vary by state, so confirm them with your state labor department or employment counsel.

Who owns offboarding

Write the owners down once. A typical split for a team of 10 to 300 people:

If you already use our employee onboarding checklist, this is the same list in reverse. The equipment and accounts you recorded on day one are exactly what you need to recover now.

1. Notice received: confirm the facts

As soon as someone resigns, or the company decides to end the employment, record the basics in one place:

• Last working day and, if different, the termination date for payroll and benefits
• Type of separation: resignation, termination, layoff, end of contract
• Manager and team, work location and state (final pay rules depend on it)
• Equipment assigned to the person, from the onboarding record
• Accrued paid time off, and what your policy or state law says about paying it out
• Whether the person is enrolled in the group health plan

For a resignation, get the notice in writing, even a short email. For an involuntary termination, HR and the manager should agree on the date and the message before the conversation happens, and IT should be ready to act the same day.

2. Handover: protect the work

Two weeks of notice goes by fast. The manager should turn it into a handover plan in the first days:

• List open projects, clients, recurring tasks and approvals the person owns
• Name who takes over each one
• Move files out of personal folders and into shared drives
• Transfer ownership of documents, calendars, shared inboxes and recurring meetings
• Update approval routes, so requests stop going to someone who is leaving
• Tell clients and vendors who their new contact is

The approval routes item is the one most often missed. If a departing manager is the approver for purchases or expenses, requests will pile up in an inbox nobody reads. This is much easier when approvals are routed by role instead of by name, as described in our approval workflow guide. And if the person was the only one who knew how a routine works, ask them to write it down before they go: our guide on how to document a business process keeps that short.

3. Access removal on the last day

This is the security part, and it should happen at the end of the last working day, or at the moment of the conversation for an involuntary termination. Former employees with working credentials are a real risk, whether or not anyone means harm.

• Disable the single sign-on account and the company email (convert the mailbox or forward it to the manager if needed)
• Revoke sessions and tokens, not just the password: phones and browsers can stay logged in
• Remove access to every tool that is not behind single sign-on: CRM, accounting, payroll, banking, social media, domain registrar, cloud consoles
• Change shared passwords the person knew, and rotate API keys they created
• Transfer ownership of admin accounts and anything registered in their name
• Remove them from building access systems, alarm codes and door codes
• Remove them as a signer on bank accounts or company cards

If you run periodic access reviews, the last review for that person is your checklist.

4. Equipment return

Use the equipment list from onboarding:

• Laptop, monitor, phone, headset, tablet, with serial numbers
• Badge, keys, parking pass, company credit card
• Any documents or materials kept at home

For remote employees, send a prepaid shipping box before the last day and agree on a date. Before wiping a laptop, confirm the manager has what they need from it. Think twice before deducting the value of unreturned equipment from the final paycheck. Under the FLSA, a deduction for items that benefit the employer cannot bring wages below the federal minimum wage or cut into required overtime pay, and state wage deduction rules can be stricter.

5. Final paycheck

Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, the Department of Labor states that employers are not required by federal law to give former employees their final paycheck immediately. State law is where the deadlines are, and they differ a lot. Three examples, verified with each state's official sources:

• California. An employee who is discharged must be paid all wages, including accrued vacation, immediately at the time of termination. An employee who quits without 72 hours' notice must be paid within 72 hours; with at least 72 hours' notice, on the last day. Late payment can trigger a waiting time penalty of up to 30 days of wages.
• New York. Final wages are due no later than the regular payday for the pay period in which the employment ended. New York also requires a written notice to the employee within five working days of termination, with the exact termination date and the date benefits are cancelled.
• Massachusetts. Employees who are fired or laid off must be paid in full on their last day of work. Employees who quit must be paid on the next regular payday.

Other states have their own rules. Check your state labor department before the last day, not after, and confirm whether accrued vacation must be paid out. Coordinate with payroll early: an off-cycle check takes time to set up.

6. Benefits and COBRA

If you have a group health plan, termination of employment (for reasons other than gross misconduct) or a reduction in hours is a qualifying event under COBRA. According to the Department of Labor:

• COBRA applies to group health plans of private-sector employers and state and local governments that had at least 20 employees on more than half of their typical business days in the previous calendar year.
• The employer must notify the plan administrator within 30 days after the qualifying event.
• The plan administrator must send the election notice to the employee and covered dependents within 14 days after receiving that notice. When the employer is also the plan administrator, the DOL describes the election notice as due within 44 days of the qualifying event.
• The employee has at least 60 days to elect coverage, counted from the later of the election notice date or the date coverage would end.
• For termination or reduced hours, coverage generally lasts up to 18 months, and the premium cannot exceed 102% of the plan's cost.

Smaller employers are not off the hook automatically: many states have "mini-COBRA" laws for insured plans that can cover employers with fewer than 20 employees. Your insurance broker or plan administrator can confirm which rules apply.

Also handle the rest of the benefits: retirement plan information, HSA or FSA rules, life insurance conversion options, and any equity or bonus terms.

7. Exit interview

Hold a short exit interview, run by HR or someone outside the person's reporting line. People are more honest with someone who is not their manager.

Questions that produce useful answers:

• What made you start looking, or accept the other offer?
• What would have made you stay?
• How was your relationship with your manager and team?
• Did you have the tools and information to do your job?
• What should we change for the next person in this role?

Record the answers in the same format every time, so patterns show up across departures.

8. Records to keep

A few records outlive the employment. The most specific federal one is Form I-9: USCIS requires employers to keep it for three years after the date of hire or one year after employment ends, whichever is later. Mark the purge date when the person leaves instead of keeping every form forever or discarding it too early.

Also keep the resignation or termination letter, the final pay record, the COBRA notices sent, the equipment return confirmation and the access removal record.

Employee offboarding timeline

Frequently asked questions

When should IT remove a departing employee's access?

At the end of the last working day for a resignation, and at the time of the conversation for an involuntary termination. Plan it in advance so it happens in minutes, and include tools outside single sign-on, shared passwords and admin accounts.

Is the final paycheck due on the last day?

Not under federal law. The DOL says there is no federal requirement to pay the final paycheck immediately, but several states require it, sometimes on the last day for terminations. Check the rule in the state where the employee works.

Does an employer have to offer COBRA?

If the company sponsors a group health plan and had at least 20 employees on more than half of its typical business days in the previous year, generally yes. Smaller employers may be covered by a state continuation law instead.

How long do I keep a terminated employee's Form I-9?

Three years after the date of hire or one year after employment ended, whichever is later. After that date you may destroy it, but not before.

Running it in Easyflow

The Employee offboarding process in the gallery turns this checklist into steps with owners: the departure notice with the last day and reason, the manager's handover with who takes over, IT revoking accesses and collecting equipment on the last day, and HR closing final pay, benefits, documents and exit interview notes. Each step has a due date, late steps can be reminded and escalated, and the whole exit keeps one timeline you can export to PDF when someone asks what happened. You can add your state's final pay deadline to the HR step, or a photo field to record the condition of returned equipment. Equipment loan and Access request keep a record of who has what, which is exactly the list you need at the next offboarding.

When you hire the replacement, start from our employee onboarding checklist.