To offboard an employee in Google Workspace without losing anything or overpaying, do five things in order: suspend the account on their last day, redirect their email, transfer their Drive files to whoever their manager picks, free up or reduce the license, and delete the account after a grace period. Suspending alone is not enough: a suspended account is still billed.
Updated on October 11, 2026 · 9 min read · Mekovault
When someone leaves, the most common move is for the admin to open the Google Workspace admin console the next day and delete the user. That solves access, but it creates three problems: the Drive files that were never transferred disappear with the account, incoming email bounces (and the customers who wrote to that person find out they are gone before you do), and nobody checked which other platforms are still billing: Slack, Zoom, Figma, Adobe, Canva or the subscription that person was paying for with the company card.
The other extreme is just as common: suspend the account “just in case” and never look at it again. A suspended account keeps its license, and Google bills per assigned license. That account is paid for month after month until somebody closes it, on average about six months based on what we see in companies with 50 to 500 people.
In the admin console: Users, pick the person, “Suspend user”. This signs out open sessions, invalidates the password and leaves the mailbox receiving messages that nobody reads. The date matters: not before (the person is still working) and not three days later (the person no longer works there and can still sign in). The right moment is the last day, at the end of the shift, with a record of who requested it.
Turn on an auto-reply (“this person no longer works here; please write to…”) and forward incoming mail to whoever takes over their work. If the manager needs to review ongoing conversations, delegate the mailbox instead of sharing the password. This way customers and vendors never go unanswered.
From the console you can transfer ownership of every Drive file to another account, and the calendar events too. Do it while the account is suspended, before deleting it: once deleted, whatever was not transferred is gone. To whom? That is not an IT decision: the direct manager decides, because they are the only one who knows which projects are still open.
This is where the money is. On a flexible plan (you pay month to month), deleting or archiving the account stops the charge from the next billing cycle. On an annual plan, the license stays under contract until renewal even if you delete the account; what you can do is reassign it to the next hire and note the reduction for the renewal date. The “archived user” option keeps the data at a lower cost than a full license.
After 30 days (or whatever your policy says), delete the account. Google lets you restore a deleted user for 20 days; after that, it is gone. With the files transferred and the email redirected, deleting no longer breaks anything.
In Mekovault the offboarding is a request that People submits (or that arrives on its own from payroll, with ADP, Gusto, Rippling or BambooHR). It is scheduled for the last day at the end of the shift and runs by itself: suspension with sign-out, auto-reply and email forwarding, license flagged for release, and deletion scheduled 30 days out with the option to undo. The manager gets an email with the options for the files (transfer to someone, recover information for a few days, deactivate) and decides with one click; if they do not answer, they get two reminders. Everything stays in the audit log for 365 days. And if the person comes back or it was a mistake, the account is reactivated with its groups and its org unit, temporarily or for good.
If your company also uses Slack, Zoom or Figma, Mekovault shows you which seats are still assigned to a suspended account and what you have to change in each console; the platforms that allow automation are being added one by one.
No. Google bills for assigned licenses, and a suspended account still has its license assigned. To stop paying you have to delete the account or move it to an archived user (cheaper), and on an annual plan the reduction only takes effect at renewal.
Google lets you restore a deleted user for 20 days. That is why it is better to suspend first and delete after a grace period, with the files already transferred.
The former employee's direct manager, not IT. They are the one who knows which projects are still open. In Mekovault the manager gets an email with the options (transfer, recover information for a few days, deactivate) and decides with one click.
It depends on your local privacy law and on the policy your employees signed. In the U.S., email on a company-owned account can usually be reviewed when a written policy says so, and some states require notice to employees. The safe route is to redirect and delegate, not to read in bulk.