Client Offboarding SOP: How to Offboard a Client in 8 Steps

TL;DR

• A client offboarding SOP is the documented way you end a client relationship, the same way every time.
• Start it once the client confirms in writing that they’re not renewing.
• Stop the billing and remove every login before the final email goes out.
• Send the client off with a plan for what’s next and a request for a testimonial.
• Archive their records and keep in touch.

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A client emails to say they won’t be renewing their contract. 

However kind the email is, it can sting a little.

Then the questions start.

“Have we still got access to their inbox?”

“Is the next invoice already scheduled?”

“Would it be weird to ask for a testimonial now?”

Most founders I work with have put real thought into how a client starts. Very few have given the same thought to how one leaves. So it happens from memory, usually squeezed in around everything else.

That’s the point where you need a client offboarding SOP.

You can download my FREE SOP template as part of the Art of Letting Go resource.

What is a client offboarding SOP?

A client offboarding SOP is a documented process for ending a client relationship. It covers stopping the billing, removing your team’s access to the client’s systems, handing over a plan for what comes next and archiving the records. Done well, every client leaves the same way, whether you run it yourself or hand it to someone on your team.

That’s the short version. Below, I’ll walk you through how to build one, using the offboarding we run at Lauren Lea OBM and OBM Associates as the example.

The ending is the bit your client remembers

You can do brilliant work for a client for a year.

If the last few weeks are an invoice that went out anyway, a login nobody removed and an email that just says “thanks for everything”, that’s what they’ll remember.

There’s a name for this. Psychologists call it the peak-end rule: we judge an experience mostly by its high point and by how it ends.

The ending is also when the testimonial gets written, or doesn’t. And it’s when your client decides what they’ll say about you the next time someone asks who they’d recommend. That matters. In Nielsen’s 2021 Trust in Advertising study, recommendations from people we know were the most trusted source of all, trusted by 89% of US consumers.

It’s why every client who works with us is automatically entered into our referral programme. If they recommend someone who goes on to work with us, they get money off their bill if they’re still working with us, or a voucher of their choice if they’re not.

If you don’t have a referral programme yet, it doesn’t need to be complicated. Decide what you’ll offer, and put it in your closing email so every client hears about it.

A client who leaves well can still send you your next one, or possibly even come back.

How to offboard a client, stage by stage

These are the stages I’d walk any founder through. I’ll show you how we run each one in my own business as we go.

If it’s just you, you’ll do every step yourself, and that’s fine. Having it written down still means nothing gets forgotten on a busy week.

If you’ve got a team member, a VA or an OBM, it’s worth splitting it. In our business, I look after the backend: the billing, the records and the closing email. The OBM who ran the account wraps up the work and removes their own access. So nothing depends on me remembering the order.

Stage	Done when	If you have a team, who could own it
1. Get it in writing	The client has confirmed by email that they’re not renewing	You
2. Stop the billing	No further invoice or payment can go out	You
3. Make a checklist for this client	The client is marked as offboarding and the checklist exists	You or a VA
4. Wrap up the work and hand over a plan	Everything agreed is delivered and the plan is ready	Whoever ran the account
5. Remove your access, and check it’s gone	Every login and saved password is gone, confirmed in writing	Everyone who had access
6. Send the closing email	The plan, referral details and testimonial request are sent	You
7. Archive, don’t delete	Files, messages and emails are archived	You or a VA
8. Keep the door open	The client is marked as a past client	You or a VA

1. Get it in writing

Start offboarding once the client has confirmed in writing that they’re not renewing. An email is enough.

If they mention it on a call or in a message, reply and ask them to pop it in an email. It can feel a bit formal. But it means you’re both working from the same date, and nobody’s relying on a half-remembered conversation.

For us, it’s usually a reply to my renewal email. If a client tells their OBM first, the OBM asks them to confirm by email so we can start properly.

2. Stop the billing

Cancel any recurring invoices or payment schedules, and take the client off whatever you use to track incoming payments.

We run our invoicing through Dubsado, so this is the first thing I do once the email comes in.

3. Make a checklist for this client

Mark the client as offboarding wherever you track your work, and create a checklist of the steps that are left. A template you duplicate each time works perfectly well.

In ClickUp, I change the client’s status to “Offboarding” and an automation creates a subtask for every remaining step. You don’t need automation for this. What matters is that the steps live somewhere other than your head.

4. Wrap up the work and hand over a plan

Before the final month ends, make sure everything you agreed to deliver has been delivered. Then give your client a plan for what comes next.

Your client has trusted you with their business for months. They leave knowing what’s in place and what to do next, from the person who knows their day-to-day best.

We do this on an offboarding call. We talk the client through what we’d recommend they focus on next, and they can ask questions while it’s all fresh. Afterwards, I confirm everything in an email, so they’ve got it in writing to come back to.

If you can, book a call rather than just sending a document. It gives the relationship a proper ending, and recommendations land differently when you’ve talked them through.

Your plan could cover:

• what’s now in place, and where to find it
• the systems and processes you built, with links to the SOPs
• what you’d prioritise next, in order
• anything half-finished, and who should pick it up
• the tools they’re paying for, and whether they still need them

5. Remove your access, and check it’s gone

When you work inside someone’s business, you collect logins.

Their inbox, their CRM, their Canva and the shared drive someone added you to in month two that nobody’s thought about since.

Every one of them needs removing. Take yourself out of every system, delete any saved passwords and log out of anything shared.

It’s a courtesy, and it’s also a security question. Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report found third parties were involved in 30% of breaches, double the year before. When you’re working inside a client’s systems, you’re one of their third parties.

If someone on your team has been doing the work, they’ll have logins of their own. Before I send anything to the client, I message my team in Slack:

How did wrapping up with [client] go? I’d love to run the offboarding today. Here are a few things I’ll need from you to do that, please.

Please confirm all passwords have been deleted.

You’ve removed yourself from all business systems and confirm no access remains.

Recommendations Roadmap, and insights going forward.

Once I have this info and confirmation, I’ll send the offboarding email along with the testimonial!

Nothing goes to the client until all three are back.

6. Send the closing email

Then send the closing email. Ours includes:

• the Recommendation Roadmap, or confirmation of final deliverables for systems build projects
• details of our referral programme
• a testimonial form

If the testimonial form isn’t filled in, Dubsado sends up to 3 gentle reminders, 2 weeks apart. If you’re doing it by hand, put the reminders in your calendar so it doesn’t rely on you remembering.

And you should ask. Your client has just seen the full picture of what you did together, so it’s a good moment. A few questions that tend to get useful answers:

• What was going on in your business before we started working together?
• What’s different now?
• Was there a moment you knew it was working?
• What would you tell someone who’s thinking about working with us?

7. Archive, don’t delete

Move their files, messages and emails somewhere out of the way, but keep them.

For us, that means archiving their Slack channel, moving their Google Drive folder into an Offboarded folder and moving their Gmail label to Offboarded.

Everything’s still there if a question comes up later, or if they come back. How long you keep client records for is one to check against your contract and with your accountant.

8. Keep the door open

The last step is a small one.

Find one simple way to stay in touch. We keep past clients on our client birthday list, marked as past clients, so they still get a birthday message from us every year.

It costs nothing. And it means the relationship doesn’t end the day the work does.

An ending handled vs an ending ignored

	Ending ignored	Ending handled
Access	Logins stay active for months	Every login removed and confirmed in writing
Billing	One more invoice goes out after they’ve left	Recurring payments cancelled as soon as the decision is confirmed
Files	Nobody’s sure where their documents are	Everything archived in one place
Their next step	The client is left to work it out	The client has a written roadmap
Testimonial	Never asked for	Requested, with reminders built in
What they remember	A vague sense of how it ended	That the work was finished properly

Make offboarding easier from day one

Most of step 5 comes down to one question.

“What have we actually got access to?”

If nobody wrote it down at the start, someone’s piecing it together from memory at the end. So start an access log when you onboard. Every time a client shares a login or adds you to a tool, note what it is, who has it and when.

When the client leaves, that log is your checklist.

If your onboarding isn’t written down yet, start with my client onboarding SOP.

What goes in a client offboarding SOP

It’s the same 8-part structure we use for every SOP, applied to offboarding:

• Document control – the owner, the version and the last review date.
• Purpose – why the process exists: to end every client relationship well and leave the door open.
• Scope – from written confirmation that the client isn’t renewing to their records being archived.
• Policy – the standards. Every departing client goes through the same process, and nothing goes to the client until access removal is confirmed.
• Tools and resources – your CRM, project management tool, password manager, shared drive and comms channel.
• Workflow overview – the stages above.
• Detailed steps – what happens at each stage, in which tool and who does it.
• Escalation path – what happens when something stalls.

We break each of these down properly in how to create SOPs as your team grows.

The escalation path is the bit most SOPs forget. For offboarding, plan for these:

• The client goes quiet before confirming. Follow up in writing with a clear date. If the contract has an end date, offboarding starts from there.
• The testimonial never comes back. After the third reminder, stop. Note it on their record and move on.
• You can’t remove yourself from an account. Ask the client to remove you, and to confirm in writing once it’s done. 

Common client offboarding mistakes

• Ending with an invoice and no plan, so the client doesn’t know what to do next.
• Removing access late, or never.
• Leaving a recurring payment running.
• Deleting records when you could archive them.
• Skipping the testimonial because asking feels awkward.
• Doing it from memory, so every client leaves differently.

Get the free SOP template

You don’t have to build your offboarding SOP from scratch. My free resource, The Art of Letting Go, gives you the SOP template and a systems audit to help you work out what to document first. Client offboarding is one of the 8 areas it covers.

And if you’d rather hand the whole thing over than build it yourself, that’s the work we do. We take the day-to-day off your plate and put the systems in place so the business runs without you in it.

Client offboarding SOP FAQs

What is the difference between a client offboarding SOP and a checklist?

A checklist tells you what to do. An SOP tells you what to do, how, in which tool, to what standard and who owns each step. A checklist helps you remember. An SOP lets someone else run the process without you.

What should a client offboarding email include?

Confirmation that the work is complete, any final deliverables or a plan for what comes next and a link to leave a testimonial. If you have a referral programme, add the details.

Should I ask for a testimonial when a client leaves?

Yes. Your client has just seen the whole of what you did for them, so it’s a good time to ask. Build the request into the closing email and automate a few reminders, so it doesn’t depend on someone remembering.

How long should client offboarding take?

We start as soon as the client confirms in writing, and run the main offboarding at the end of their final month. The testimonial reminders then run for up to 6 weeks.

What if a client stops responding?

Follow up in writing and give a clear date. If the contract has an end date, it ends then, and offboarding runs as normal from that point.

Is client offboarding the same as employee offboarding?

No. Employee offboarding is about someone leaving your team: payroll, equipment and HR paperwork. Client offboarding is about a client relationship ending. This guide is about the second one.

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About the author

Lauren Lea is a Business & Operations Strategist and the founder of Lauren Lea OBM and OBM Associates. She has nearly 2 decades of experience behind the scenes of growing businesses, including becoming the youngest operational manager in financial services across the UK, EU and Australasia. She helps established founders build businesses that grow without consuming them.