When someone leaves your business, their Microsoft 365 account is still a key to your email, files and customer data. Forgotten accounts are one of the most common security gaps we find in small-business tenants. This checklist covers what to do — and in what order.

Before their last day

  • Agree who takes over their work — email, shared files, customer conversations and any recurring meetings they organise.
  • Find what they own. Files in their OneDrive, Teams they own, shared mailboxes they manage and any Microsoft Forms or Power Automate flows they created.
  • List their devices — company laptop, phone, and any personal phone with company email on it.

On their last day

  1. Block sign-in to the account in the Microsoft 365 admin centre.
  2. Reset the password and sign them out of all sessions, so they can’t stay signed in on a phone or browser.
  3. Remove their MFA methods and any app passwords.
  4. Wipe company data from their devices. If devices are managed with Intune, you can remove company data from a personal phone or reset a company laptop remotely.
  5. Remove them from admin roles, groups and shared mailboxes.

Keep their email and files

  • Convert the mailbox to a shared mailbox if others need to keep receiving and reading their email. A shared mailbox under 50 GB doesn’t need a licence.
  • Set an auto-reply telling contacts who to reach instead.
  • Give their manager access to their OneDrive so files can be moved before the account is deleted. Microsoft 365 can do this automatically when the user is removed.
  • Check any legal or retention requirements before deleting anything.

After 30 days

  • Remove the licence so you stop paying for it.
  • Delete the account once data has been moved and retention requirements are met.
  • Update shared passwords for anything that wasn’t behind single sign-on — the Wi-Fi, supplier portals, social media accounts.

Make it a repeatable process

The businesses that get this right have a written checklist and one person responsible for it. Better still, much of it can be automated: when HR marks someone as leaving, their access is removed, their mailbox converted and their manager notified — without anyone remembering each step.

Meet Software Solutions sets up clean onboarding and offboarding for small businesses in Sudbury and across Northern Ontario, including Intune device management and automated workflows. Book a free technology review and we will check for leftover accounts while we are at it.