Employee exit checklist

An employee exit checklist is the last-week operations list: knowledge, access, assets, letters, and a freeze on new work. It is not Full and Final settlement math. Computation and the settlement workflow stay on the full and final settlement process. Returning devices, badges, and kits stays on the employee asset handover checklist; this page only requires that handover is owned and dated. How resignation, notice, and last working date (LWD) become process facts stays on resignation, notice, and last working date. Product surface for the employment trail: Dayzen employee lifecycle (resignation with LWD, and an FNF worksheet). Dayzen does not promise a two-day FNF SLA. Catalog and assignment live on Dayzen asset management; the asset checklist still owns the exit subset.

This is operational guidance, not legal advice. Appointment terms and your issued exit policy set clocks and letter types. This page does not invent a nationwide Indian exit statute.

What “last week” actually means

Last week is the working days you can still use before LWD, not a mood that starts when someone mentions leaving in chat. If notice is longer than seven days, do not wait until Monday of the final week to start knowledge and access planning. If notice is shorter, compress the same list; do not drop the list. The trigger that this checklist runs against is a dated resignation (or a dated termination event) with an LWD you treat as the last day the person may use systems and premises. That trigger is recorded on the resignation article. Here you execute against it.

Name an exit owner. In a small company that may be the same person who runs payroll. The hat still changes: last-week ops are not the same object as settlement numbers. Chat “please offboard them” is not a start date. The start date is when LWD is on the record and owners are named.

Freeze new work, then hand knowledge

The first operating decision is what the person must not start. New client ownership, new hiring interviews as the sole interviewer, new system admin grants, and new expense claims that will outlive them are typical freezes. Write the freeze. A polite “wind down” with no list is how a leaving engineer ships a change nobody can reverse.

Knowledge handoff is not a 40-page wiki dump on LWD afternoon. It is a named set of live objects:

• Work in progress: tickets, projects, and client threads with a successor and a status as of a dated snapshot.
• Recurring duties: reports, filings the person prepared as an operator (not as the company’s statutory filer — Dayzen does not file returns), vendor calls, and calendar series.
• Secrets the role held: where passwords and tokens live, who may rotate them, and that rotation is scheduled before LWD when the person was the only holder.
• People map: who outside the company still emails this person, and who will answer after LWD.

The hiring manager owns the work map. HR owns that it exists and is dated. System owners own credential rotation. Do not put all four on HR’s spreadsheet. The product does not auto-run every handoff conversation. If the person is already away, the checklist still runs: absence does not cancel revoke or asset return; the manager uses the last snapshot.

Access: revoke in an order, not a rumour

Access removal is a sequenced list of systems the person could use, with an owner per system and a time relative to LWD. Typical order for many offices:

1. Privileged admin on production, finance, and identity providers — often earlier than ordinary email, so a disgruntled last day cannot empty a vault.
2. Shared mailboxes and groups where they were the only moderator.
3. Attendance, HRMS employee self-service that still lets them change their own bank details after you intended a freeze, and payroll inputs they should no longer edit.
4. Building, VPN, and laptop local login — coordinated with asset return so you do not lock a device you still need to collect.
5. Personal email forwarding and auto-replies that should point to a successor, then mailbox hold or deletion per your issued retention practice. This page does not state a DPDP numbered duty.

Write who clicks next to each row. Recording LWD does not revoke a cloud admin role. System owners execute against the employment fact. If you have no system inventory, last-week access is guesswork — build it before the next exit.

Do not leave “inactive in the directory” as a substitute for revoke. An exited employee record is a people-status. Login that still works is a different object. Mark exited when policy says the employment ended; revoke access on the schedule you published, which may be hours before LWD for some systems and at close of LWD for others.

Assets: point, do not rebuild

Laptops, phones, badges, SIM cards, tokens, uniforms, and tools are the asset subset. Run that subset on the asset handover checklist. This page’s job is only:

• A named handover appointment before or on LWD, with location or courier path.
• A pointer to the assignment record so you are not rediscovering what they held from memory.
• A dated confirmation that handover happened, or a dated exception (lost, disputed, still in transit) with an owner.

Dayzen asset management can hold catalog, assignment, and handover photos. Use that record. Do not paste a second asset novel into this article. Finance may care about recovery for missing items; that recovery arithmetic, if it touches FNF, belongs on the settlement guide — not as a homemade deduction invented in the last-week chat.

Letters and certificates HR still owes

Last week is when you confirm which employment letters you will issue and on what date: relieving, experience, and any other template your policy lists. Dayzen lifecycle includes employment letter templates. Templates are not legal advice on what a labour inspector will accept. Name the owner, the template, and whether issue is on LWD, after handover, or after FNF — three different promises. Do not promise all three on LWD if your process waits on clearance.

Confirm the list you already issue; do not catalogue every letter type here. If a letter waits on asset clearance or FNF, write the dependency. Waiting on settlement is not a reason to skip access revoke.

What this checklist must not steal

Resignation clocks, notice recovery versus serve, and how LWD was chosen stay on the resignation article. Do not restate nationwide notice lengths; there are none on that page or this one as law.

FNF owns:

• What the worksheet includes in your company (earnings, recoveries, leave encashment as you actually run them).
• Who prepares, who approves, and when payment is released under your process.
• How lock and later adjustments work if you allow them.

Dayzen’s FNF worksheet is a place to work those numbers. It is not a two-day service-level promise. If your handbook says you aim to settle within a named number of days, that is your operating promise. Do not attribute a two-day SLA to the product.

Module maps stay on hire-to-exit HR modules. This page is the last-week task list.

A practical last-week board

Bucket	Owner	Done means
LWD on record	HR / lifecycle	Dated resignation or termination with LWD
Work freeze	Manager	Named list of what they must not start; successor for live work
Knowledge snapshot	Manager	WIP, recurring duties, people map, dated
Privilege revoke	System owners	Admin and vault access removed on the published schedule
Ordinary access	IT / owners	Email, VPN, attendance login handled as sequenced
Assets	Asset owner	Handover dated on the asset checklist
Letters	HR	Which templates, which date, which dependencies
FNF worksheet	HR / payroll	Started when your process starts — not a fake two-day SLA
Directory status	HR	Exited when employment ended — not a substitute for revoke

Failure modes in the last week

Shared passwords never in a vault: rotate, then hand the vault, not the chat. Mailbox left open “for clients”: named exception with an end date, or forgotten access — prefer a successor auto-reply and a hold. Laptop collected while cloud admin is still live: you reversed the sequence. Two exit spreadsheets (manager desktop plus HR) diverge on LWD afternoon; use the employment event and the named checklists. Starting FNF in the last-week huddle as if settlement were the whole exit makes people skip knowledge and access — keep the worksheet on the settlement path and keep this list running even if numbers are not ready. Deleting the person instead of marking exited causes rehire panic later; last week should not destroy the ID.

Who meets, and when it is over

A short huddle beats a heroic LWD: exit owner, manager, and whoever clicks the first privileged revoke. Assets can be a same-day appointment. If you collect feedback, store a dated note. This is not an engagement product.

Complete means every board bucket has a dated done or exception. Complete is not “they left the building” and not “FNF paid.” You can finish last-week ops with FNF still open. You should not finish FNF while admin access is still live unless you wrote that exception.

Last week is knowledge, access, assets, and letters against a known LWD. Assets have their own checklist. Settlement has its own guide. Lifecycle holds the employment event and the FNF worksheet. Nobody gets a two-day FNF promise from the product. Chat is not offboarding.

Run the board on internships and short contracts too; mark rows N/A with a name rather than skipping because tenure was short. Keep lifecycle as the employment trail, the asset checklist for things, and the FNF guide for money. Stop when last-week ops are done or explicitly parked — not with a second settlement essay.