When should a handover start?

As soon as the leaving date is known, and ideally two weeks before it. The last week is the worst time to write anything down: the person is already half gone, and the questions you need to ask haven't come up yet.

Should we keep a leaver's email account?

Keep their mail reachable for at least a few months. Clients and suppliers reply to old threads for a long time. In Microsoft 365 the usual route is converting the mailbox to a shared mailbox; in Google Workspace, an admin can transfer the account's data or keep it with delegated access. Check your plan's options before you delete anything.

What happens to their Google Drive files?

In Google Workspace, deleting a user deletes the files they own unless an admin transfers ownership first. Transfer ownership to someone who stays before the account is removed.

Is a handover document enough?

It's necessary, not enough. A document captures the tasks someone knows they are doing. The expensive losses are the things they never thought of as tasks: a promise made on a call, a discount given for a reason, the one person at a client who actually decides.

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The files stay. The context leaves.

Someone on a small team gives notice. You get the laptop back, the logins and a handover doc. Three months later, a client asks about something only they knew.

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What actually leaves with them

Kalpataru Sahoo · 20 October 2026

The files don’t leave. They sit in the shared drive, exactly where they were. What leaves is the layer on top of the files: what each one is for, who it was promised to, and why it looks the way it does. In a small business that layer is usually in one or two people’s heads. It falls into five groups:

Open promises. “I’ll send the revised quote after the holidays.” Said once, in one email or on one call, and now nobody knows it’s owed.
Relationship history. Which contact at a client actually decides, what annoyed them last time, which topics to avoid.
Exceptions and their reasons. Why one customer pays the old price, why an invoice goes out on the 15th instead of the 1st. Without the reason, the next person “fixes” it.
Where things live. The latest version of the contract, the spreadsheet that really drives the forecast, the folder named “old” that isn’t.
Who to call. The supplier’s one helpful person, the accountant who knows the history, the developer who built the integration.

Why the handover doc doesn't catch it

Handover documents are written in the last week, by someone who is already leaving, from memory. They list tasks: run payroll, send the monthly report, renew the domain. Those are the easy part, because the task itself reminds you it exists.

The five groups above don’t remind anyone. Nobody thinks of “the client’s finance director hates surprise invoices” as a task. So it isn’t in the doc, and you find out when the surprise invoice goes out.

The fix isn’t a longer template. It’s starting earlier and using the person’s own trail, their sent mail and calendar, to jog what they know instead of asking them to recall it cold.

A handover that works: four lists in two weeks

Start as soon as the date is known. Book three 30-minute sessions with the person leaving and fill in four lists together.

1. Open commitments. Go through their sent mail from the last two or three months and look for promises. In Gmail, searches like in:sent newer_than:90d "I'll" and in:sent newer_than:90d "by Friday" surface most of them. Write each one down with who it’s owed to and a new owner.

2. Every outside relationship. Scroll their sent folder and calendar for the last quarter and list each client, supplier or partner they deal with. For each: the one person who matters, the state of things, and anything sensitive.

3. Exceptions, with the reason. Ask directly: “What do we do for one customer that we don’t do for the others, and why?” Then the same question for suppliers, invoices and internal processes. The reason is the part to write down. It’s the same principle as a decision log: record what can’t be reconstructed later.

4. Where things live. For each relationship and each recurring job, the one link to the current version. Not the folder, the file.

Then do one thing before their last day: introduce the new owner on every live thread, in the thread itself. A reply-all saying “From next month, Priya picks this up” does more than any document, because it moves the relationship and the history together.

After they leave: don't delete too fast

The most common expensive mistake is removing the account the week someone leaves. Clients reply to old threads for months, and the answer to “what did we agree?” is often in that mailbox.

Keep the mailbox reachable for at least a quarter. In Microsoft 365 that usually means converting it to a shared mailbox; in Google Workspace an admin can keep it with delegated access or transfer the data.
Transfer ownership of their files before removing the account. In Google Workspace, deleting a user deletes the files they own unless someone else is given them first.
Set an auto-reply that names the new contact, so people stop writing into a void.

Where Memoraxis fits, and where it doesn't

To be clear about the limits first. Memoraxis is a personal workspace today. It remembers what comes through the accounts you connect, from the day you connect them. It doesn’t capture a colleague’s inbox, and shared team workspaces are planned, not built yet.

What it helps with is your side of the handover, which in a small business is usually the side that matters: the threads you were copied on, the meetings you were in, and every client email that lands with you after they’ve gone. It keeps those connected in one business memory, so when a client asks “didn’t we agree on this?” you can ask Memoraxis and get an answer with the emails and meetings it came from, instead of searching three inboxes.

It won’t recover a conversation it never saw. That part still needs the four lists.

FAQ

When should a handover start?: As soon as the leaving date is known, and ideally two weeks before it. The last week is the worst time to write anything down: the person is already half gone, and the questions you need to ask haven't come up yet.
Should we keep a leaver's email account?: Keep their mail reachable for at least a few months. Clients and suppliers reply to old threads for a long time. In Microsoft 365 the usual route is converting the mailbox to a shared mailbox; in Google Workspace, an admin can transfer the account's data or keep it with delegated access. Check your plan's options before you delete anything.
What happens to their Google Drive files?: In Google Workspace, deleting a user deletes the files they own unless an admin transfers ownership first. Transfer ownership to someone who stays before the account is removed.
Is a handover document enough?: It's necessary, not enough. A document captures the tasks someone knows they are doing. The expensive losses are the things they never thought of as tasks: a promise made on a call, a discount given for a reason, the one person at a client who actually decides.

Keep the context that comes through you

Connect a mailbox and a calendar. From that point on, what comes through them is remembered and connected, so you can ask later what was agreed.

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