Whoever keeps the register
Sets the status and the last day as soon as the departure is known, and records each item as it arrives. Either role can do it: editing a staff record and closing a loan are member permissions, not admin-only ones.
Employee offboarding & equipment return
The kit comes back before the last day, not after it.
Set one leave date. That person's record becomes the return list, a reminder goes out 14, 7 and 2 days before they go — to your team and to them — and what came back, when, and in what condition stays on the record.
No card needed · the checklist needs no account at all
- One date starts the chase
- Reminders at 14, 7 and 2 days
- Printable checklist, no signup
- Condition and history kept
Nobody loses a laptop. They leave with it
Equipment does not go missing at a desk, it goes missing at a departure — and the window to ask for it is short and closes on a known date. Two weeks before someone's last day they still read your email and still want to leave tidily; three weeks after it, you are asking a favour of a stranger with a new job. What makes that window hard to use is not knowing who to ask. It is knowing exactly what they have, on the right day, without anyone having to remember. Both of those are record problems, and this page is what KitLog does about them.
What you do once, and what happens without you
The manual part is two fields on one screen. Everything below follows from them.
- Record the last day
Staff → the person → Edit. Set Status to Leaving and Leave date to their last working day, then Save changes. Admins and members can both do this; the person leaving needs no KitLog account and never signs in. - Their record becomes the return list
The staff page already lists every item still open against them — what it is, the day it went out, when it is due back, and how late anything already is. Nothing has to be assembled from email or a spreadsheet: it is the same register the kit was assigned from, and each item's own page carries its full history. - Due dates start answering to the last day
Anything you assign them from now on takes their last day as its due-back date automatically. Kit that was already out keeps the date it had, so the dashboard flags any loan falling after the last day and sends you to their record to bring it forward — a due date past somebody's departure is a reminder that arrives after they have gone. - KitLog sends the reminders
14, 7 and 2 days before the last day, everyone with a login on your account gets an email naming exactly what that person still holds. So does the leaver, if their staff record carries an email address. The exact timing and its conditions are in the table below. - They hand it in, one item or all of it
Mark returned closes a single loan and is where the condition it came back in is written down. Mark all returned lists everything still out and closes the lot behind one confirmation, dated today — it records no per-item condition, so anything damaged is worth returning on its own instead. - Close the record honestly
Once everything is in, set their status to Left; the person, the items and the full history stay exactly where they are. If something never comes back, retire that asset with a reason — lost, kept, written off — rather than deleting the row, so the register still explains itself a year later.
The reminder schedule, exactly as it runs
Three fixed marks, counted back from the last day you typed in. Not a rule you configure — this is what the shipped job does.
| When | Who gets it | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| 14 days before the last day | Everyone with a login on your account, and the leaver themselves if their staff record has an email address | The first notice, listing every item still open against them. Your copy carries the day each item went out and a link straight to their record; theirs is the list, their last day, and a request to hand the items over. |
| 7 days before the last day | The same recipients | The same list, a week out — in practice the point at which somebody walks over and asks for the dock. |
| 2 days before the last day | The same recipients | The last automatic prompt while they are still in the building and still answering email. |
Five things worth knowing about those three emails
- They fire on those three days and no others. A last day set five days out means only the two-day reminder will ever send: the 14 and 7 day marks are already behind you. The person stays flagged on your dashboard the whole time either way.
- Nothing is sent if they hold nothing. The chase is about items, not about the departure. Somebody leaving with nothing outstanding generates no email at all.
- The send is a daily job, not a reaction to your saving the record. It runs once each morning and works out that day's marks. Saving a leave date in the afternoon does not send anything that afternoon.
- The leaver's copy needs an email address on their staff record. Without one, the reminders still go to your own users — the item is still chased, just not by us on your behalf.
- An account in read-only stops being chased. If a trial has ended or a subscription has lapsed, the data stays and the reminders stop. They start again when the subscription does.
Who is responsible for what
The person leaving
Receives the same list your team does, if you hold their email address, and hands the items to whoever runs the register. They need no account and no app, which is deliberate — a departure should unwind logins, not create one.
Their manager
Owns the conversation the software cannot have. KitLog can say that a monitor and a dock are still out; somebody still has to ask for the ones that live in a spare room at home.
Whoever runs your IT accounts
Disabling access is a separate job from recovering hardware. Marking a person as leaving does not deactivate a KitLog login, and deactivating a login does not chase their kit — most departures need both, and KitLog only does the second.
What the record can show afterwards
The reason to do this in a register rather than in a reminders app is that a return leaves evidence. Four questions that arrive after the event, and where each is answered:
- “What were they actually issued?” Every assignment stays on both the asset and the person — what went out, on what date, with what condition noted, and when it came back. The history outlives whoever was administering it at the time.
- “What state was it in when it came back?” Condition is recorded at hand-over and again at return, on the loan itself, so the two can be compared. It is the one field that cannot be reconstructed later, and the reason a damaged item is worth returning individually.
- “Who closed this off, and when?” The activity log records the return and the account that performed it, including the bulk close, with its date. Admins can read it in the app and export it as CSV.
- “What never came back?” An item nobody returned is still an open loan against a person marked Left — which is an alert on the dashboard rather than a silence. Retire it with a reason when you accept it is gone, and the register keeps both the reason and the history.
A printable equipment-return checklist
Free to use, with no signup and no email address. Print this page — Ctrl+P, or ⌘P on a Mac — and the checklist below is what comes out: the rest of the page is left off the paper. It is written to be useful whether or not you ever use KitLog.
Equipment return checklist · https://kit-log.com/features/employee-offboarding/
As soon as the departure is known
- Write down the last working day. Every date below counts back from it.
- List everything issued to them, not just the laptop: phone, SIM, charger, dock, monitor, keyboard, headset, bag, external drives, keys, passes, fobs, company card.
- Note where each item physically is — office, home, a client site, a car. This is the fact that decides how long the return takes.
- Name one person who owns the return. A checklist with no owner is a list of things that did not happen.
Two weeks out
- Send the leaver the list and ask them to confirm it. They will remember an item you do not have written down.
- Agree a date and a method for each item: handed over in person, posted, or collected.
- Flag anything that needs wiping, re-imaging or a licence reassigning, and tell whoever does that work now rather than on the day.
- Check the register for anything due back after their last day, and bring the date forward.
The last week
- Confirm the handover time and place in writing.
- Chase anything that is at their home — that is the category that becomes a problem, and a week is enough notice to bring it in.
- Prepare the paperwork: the signed loan agreement, if you have one, and the list they confirmed.
On the last day
- Receive each item against the list and tick it off in front of them.
- Write down the condition of each item as it comes back, in specific words — “small dent on lid, charger present” settles an argument that “fine” does not.
- Record the return in your register the same day, item by item.
- Hand back anything of theirs you are holding.
Afterwards
- Deal with access separately: logins, shared accounts, building access, anything with their name on it.
- For anything still outstanding, agree a return date in writing and keep the item recorded as issued to them until it arrives.
- When an item is genuinely not coming back, close it honestly — mark it lost, kept or written off, with the reason and the date.
- Set their status to Left once the list is clear, and keep the record.
Questions, answered
- When exactly does KitLog send the leaver reminders?
- 14, 7 and 2 days before the last day recorded on the staff record, and on no other days. A daily job works out each morning which accounts have somebody at one of those marks, so nothing is sent at the moment you save the record. The email goes to everyone with a login on your account, and to the person leaving if their record carries an email address.
- Does the person leaving need a KitLog account?
- No, and they never have one. People who hold kit are staff records, not logins — they receive the reminder by email and hand the items over. Only colleagues who help run the register are invited as users, and users are unlimited on every plan.
- Can KitLog find or lock a laptop somebody has not returned?
- No. It records custody — who was given what, when, and in what condition — and has no way to locate, lock or wipe a device. That is what device-management software is for, and it has to be in place beforehand. What KitLog gives you is an accurate, dated account of what was issued and what came back, which is the thing an escalation actually needs.
- Someone is leaving in three days. Is it worth setting the date?
- Yes. The two-day reminder will still fire, the items are listed on their record from the moment you save it, and they stay on your dashboard as an alert until the kit is back — including after their last day, when the alert becomes the loudest one on the board.
- Can we take the cost of unreturned equipment out of final pay?
- That is an employment question rather than a KitLog feature, and the rules differ by jurisdiction and usually depend on terms already agreed in writing. Our free loan agreement template includes a deduction clause as a starting point and says plainly that it is not legal advice. Have it checked by someone qualified before you rely on it.
- What happens to the record after they have gone?
- Set their status to Left. The person, every item they held and the full history stay in the register, and the staff export can be filtered to leavers, which is how most people produce evidence that a departure was handled properly.
Start before the next resignation, not after it
The awkward truth about offboarding is that it cannot be fixed on the day: the list you need on somebody's last day is the one you have been keeping since their first. KitLog imports the spreadsheet you already have, so the register exists before you need it — then every hand-over adds to it, and every departure reads it back to you. Starter is £9 a month + VAT for up to 300 assets, unlimited users on every plan, and the trial is 14 days with no card.