Offboarding App Overview

Offboarding

1. What it is

Offboarding manages the full employee exit process — from the moment someone resigns or is terminated through access revocation, knowledge transfer, and post-separation document access. It replaces ad-hoc checklists with a tracked plan of tasks, documents, and compliance milestones.

• Enablement: Offboarding requires a license. An administrator enables it from Admin → Apps → All Apps.
• What it is not: Offboarding does not handle day-to-day HR records or org-chart changes. Those live in the People app. Offboarding only takes over once a departure is confirmed.

2. Standing it up

1. Go to Apps → Offboarding → Settings.
2. Set the Default Notice Period for HR-Created Plans (default: 14 days). This is the number of days added to today’s date to pre-fill the termination date on New Offboarding Plan. The notice an employee must give when they resign is a different setting, Default Minimum Notice Period, which notice-period policies can override.
3. Decide whether to Require exit interview and Require knowledge transfer on plan completion. Both default to On — a plan cannot be marked complete until these are submitted.
4. Choose the Resignation approval levels (default: 2 — Manager then HR). This controls how many approvals a self-service resignation passes through before an offboarding plan is created.
5. Optionally choose a Primary HR approver (and backups). Anyone with an HR designation, Admin or Super Admin role can approve at the HR stage; the primary and backup approvers only decide who is notified first.
6. Go to Apps → Offboarding → Templates and create at least one offboarding template. A template defines the tasks and documents that are auto-generated when a plan is created from it. Without a template, the system generates a default task set based on the plan type.
7. Optionally create Exit interview templates and Knowledge transfer templates from the same Templates page. These define the questions and sections that appear when the departing employee completes those steps.
8. Grant access: admins, super admins and people whose organizational role is flagged as HR staff see every plan; managers see the plans of people in their reporting line. You can also make someone an Offboarding app admin or contributor from the app’s Admins & Contributors panel in Admin → Apps, which lets them work every plan without changing their org-wide role. Group terminations, WARN notices and separation agreements stay with admins, super admins and HR.

You don’t need an exit interview template before you require exit interviews. With none set up, the departing employee answers the app’s built-in questions — their reason for leaving, a few satisfaction ratings and whether they would recommend you as a place to work. Create a template when you want to ask your own.

3. How it fits together

Plans, templates, and tasks

An offboarding plan is the central record for one employee’s departure. Every plan has a type, a termination date, a last working day, and a status that moves through Draft → Active → Completed (or Cancelled).

A template pre-defines the tasks and documents that a plan should contain. When you create a plan from a template, the system copies the template’s task and document definitions into the plan. Each task has a department (IT, HR, Manager, Payroll, Legal, Finance, Facilities, Operations), a day offset relative to the termination date, and a priority (Critical, High, Medium, Low).

If no template is selected, the system generates default tasks based on the plan type. For example, a Voluntary plan gets seven tasks including “Schedule exit interview”, “Knowledge transfer session”, “Collect company equipment”, and “Process final paycheck”. An Involuntary plan begins with “Immediate access revocation” and also includes “Document termination reason” and “Review separation agreement”.

Example: You create a “Standard Voluntary Exit” template with 12 tasks across IT, HR, and Manager departments. An employee resigns, their manager approves, and the system auto-creates a plan from this template. Each task appears with a due date calculated from the termination date — “Revoke system access” on day 0, “Send COBRA notice” on day +1, “Knowledge transfer session” on day −7.

Plan types

Every plan is one of five types: Voluntary, Involuntary, Retirement, End of Contract, or Layoff. The type determines which default tasks are generated (when no template is used) and how the plan appears in analytics. One employee can have only one active or draft plan at a time.

Resignations

An employee can submit a resignation directly from the app. The request routes through a configurable approval chain of 1 to 3 levels: Manager only, Manager then HR, or Manager then Department Head then HR. Notice period policies can vary by country, region, and employee type — the system finds the most specific matching policy and calculates the last working day from it.

When a resignation is fully approved, the system can automatically create an offboarding plan if that setting is enabled (default: On). The plan inherits the resignation’s dates, manager, and type, is built from one of your active offboarding templates where you have one, and is created as a Draft — the employee does not see the plan until HR reviews it and clicks Start.

Access revocation and SLA enforcement

HR or IT can revoke access by hand from a plan’s Access Revocation page. It lists IT systems, physical access, and equipment (the employee’s assigned Asset Pro assets when Asset Pro is enabled), and three confirmation checkboxes — one per checklist — must all be ticked before the revocation is recorded.

With Auto-Revoke Access on Last Working Day on (default: On), a daily job does the same for every active plan whose access is not yet revoked once its last working day has ended in your company’s time zone — access goes at the first daily run (06:00 UTC) after the close of business that day — catching up plans from the previous 14 days if a run was missed. Revoking deactivates the employee’s membership in your organization, ends their sessions, and hands what they own to a surviving owner where those apps are enabled — Password Manager vaults, Contracts, Workspaces, Sites and more. It cannot be undone from the product.

When a plan is started, the system also sets a secondary SLA: end of business day one business day after the termination date. A plan whose required tasks are still incomplete at that point is marked as breached and escalated (see the Offboarding FAQ).

Plans created from a termination in a connected HRIS (the Merge.dev webhook) also get a primary SLA — end of business day on the termination date, or 4 hours after the termination was logged if that was later. When it passes, the daily job disables the employee’s account in each identity provider you switched on under Automated Deprovisioning in Settings (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace), and after that succeeds reclaims their Slack seat if SaaS License Reclamation is on. Plans created any other way do not get a primary SLA, so this outbound deprovisioning does not run for them — disable those accounts in your identity provider yourself; the Access Revocation checklist lists them.

Exit interviews and knowledge transfer

Both can be required organization-wide from Settings (both default to required). An exit interview uses a template of structured questions (rating scales, NPS, single and multiple choice, yes/no, open text), or the built-in questions when no template applies. Its answers are attributed, not anonymous: the employee, HR and administrators can read them; a manager who is not an administrator or in HR sees only that the step is done. For anonymous feedback, Settings can also send leavers an Anonymous Exit Survey from the Surveys app, read there only once enough people have answered. Knowledge transfer uses a template of sections where the departing employee documents their responsibilities, processes, and contacts.

Plans cannot be marked complete until both are submitted — if required. An exit interview can also be scheduled for a specific date, and the employee receives an Inbox notification to complete it. When the departing employee submits knowledge transfer, the successor named on it is notified by email and in-app.

With Offer “Talk it through” on in Settings, the departing employee can also hold their exit interview as a short conversation with an AI interviewer instead of filling in the form — see “What is Talk it through” in the Offboarding FAQ.

Group terminations and WARN compliance

Group terminations manage layoffs that affect multiple employees. They track WARN Act applicability, required notice periods, the decisional unit, and age demographics for OWBPA compliance. A new group termination’s effective date defaults to 60 days out. From a group termination you create its WARN notices (plant closing, mass layoff, or relocation), each with employee, union, and state-agency versions; separation agreements are created on each employee’s plan and linked to the group.

Group terminations are restricted to admins, super admins, and HR — managers and Offboarding app admins cannot access them.

Separation agreements

A separation agreement is a legal document attached to an offboarding plan. It is created through a guided wizard that pre-populates employee information from the plan. For employees 40 or older they apply ADEA/OWBPA consideration periods (21 days for an individual, 45 days for a group termination) and a 7-day revocation period. There is no e-signature delivery yet: send the agreement to the employee yourself, then click Mark as Sent to record it.

Separation agreements are restricted to the same HR-sensitive access level as group terminations.

Former Employee Portal

After the employee has left, the Former Employee Portal gives them a place to retrieve their pay stubs, tax forms, HR documents, and experience letters. It is switched on in Admin → People → Settings (Former employees), where you also set how many years access lasts after the termination date (default: 7).

When a plan is completed and the employee has a personal email on file (different from their work email), they are granted portal access and emailed a link to it (unless Auto-Send Portal Access on Termination is off). They sign in with a one-time token sent to their personal email or phone. If Require Personal Email During Offboarding is on, the plan cannot be completed until HR verifies the personal email.

HR can also send a token by email or SMS from the plan’s Former Employee Portal Access card once the employee has been terminated.

4. Running it

Creating an offboarding plan manually

1. Go to Apps → Offboarding → Plans → New Plan.
2. Select the employee, their manager, and a plan type.
3. Choose a template (or leave blank for default tasks).
4. Set the termination date and last working day.
5. The plan is created in Draft status. Review the generated tasks and documents.
6. Click Start to move it to Active. This sends notifications (to the manager, HR, and employee, based on Settings) and syncs the termination date to the employee record.

Processing a resignation

1. Go to Apps → Offboarding → Resignations to see pending requests.
2. Review the request — check the intended last day, notice period, and reason.
3. Approve or reject. If the approval chain has more levels, the request advances to the next approver.
4. On final approval, an offboarding plan is auto-created (if enabled in Settings).

Completing an offboarding plan

1. Work through each task — mark as completed, started, or skipped.
2. If required, have the employee complete their exit interview and knowledge transfer.
3. If Require Personal Email During Offboarding is on, verify the employee’s personal email.
4. Once all required items are done, click Complete. The system deactivates the employee and revokes their remaining access, ends their benefit enrollments and opens COBRA eligibility (if Benefits Management is enabled), pays out banked time where your policy pays out on termination, and — if they have a personal email on file — grants Former Employee Portal access and emails them about it.

Reviewing analytics

Go to Apps → Offboarding → Analytics. The dashboard shows total exits, turnover rate, voluntary exits, and average tenure; exit trends and the voluntary vs involuntary split; rehire eligibility; knowledge transfer, final document and equipment return rates; exit reasons and exit interview insights — filterable to the last 7, 30 or 90 days or the last year. Exits by department are in the CSV export.

Exporting a plan

From any plan detail page, export as PDF or CSV for compliance records.

5. Settings

Setting	Where	Default	What it changes
Default notice period for HR-created plans	Settings	14 days	Days added to today to pre-fill the termination date on New Offboarding Plan
Require exit interview	Settings	On	Plans cannot be completed until the exit interview is submitted
Require knowledge transfer	Settings	On	Plans cannot be completed until knowledge transfer is submitted
Request exit interview during resignation	Settings	Off	Pre-ticks “I would like to schedule an exit interview” on the employee’s resignation form
Auto-create offboarding plan	Settings	On	Whether an approved resignation automatically generates a plan
Auto-revoke access on last working day	Settings	On	Whether the daily job revokes access once the last working day has ended in your company’s time zone (cannot be undone from the product)
Anonymous exit survey	Settings	None	An anonymous Surveys app survey sent to leavers when their plan starts (needs the Surveys app)
Offer “Talk it through”	Settings	Off	Whether departing employees on voluntary, retirement and end-of-contract plans may hold their exit interview as a conversation with an AI interviewer (HR can offer it on other plans, or keep a plan to the form, from the plan page)
Let leavers talk it through out loud	Settings	Off	Whether “Talk it through” also offers a live voice call, using your organization’s voice minutes
Notify manager	Settings	On	Send notifications to the plan’s manager on plan events
Notify HR	Settings	On	Send notifications to HR staff on plan events
Notify employee	Settings	On	Send notifications to the departing employee on plan events
Resignation approval levels	Settings	2	Number of approval levels: 1 (Manager), 2 (Manager → HR), or 3 (Manager → Dept Head → HR)
Default minimum notice period	Settings	14 days	Notice an employee must give when no notice-period policy matches them
AI agent	Settings	On	Whether the Offboarding Ask AI agent is available
Primary and backup HR approvers	Settings	None	Who is notified first at the HR approval stage (anyone with an HR designation, Admin or Super Admin role can still approve)
Default template	Settings	None	Template pre-selected on New Offboarding Plan
Notice period policies	Settings → Notice Period Policies	(none)	Per-country, per-region, and per-employee-type overrides for the notice period

6. More help

• Offboarding FAQ — specific setup and operating questions
• Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Offboarding from these articles.