Think about how many accounts your business has with a login to gain access: your website, Facebook, Twitter, Google Analytics, Google AdWords, PayPal, Go To Meeting, call tracking, YouTube … the list goes on.

What if the one person who had complete access to these left your company?

As you see, this can go one of two ways: there’s good, where the person leaves after a nice two week transition, but that still leaves a lot of room for error: something could be lost in the transition, forgotten or misplaced.

Then there’s what people like to pretend never happens.

As human beings, we would all like to believe that people are inherently good. And as a business owner, when it comes to running a business you’d like to believe that you have a solid hiring process in place (which includes a thorough reference check) and that the employees you hire and learn to trust are honest and ethical.

Realistically speaking, however, business is business and unfortunately, as much as we’d like to see the good in people, there are always instances when we end up with a disgruntled employee or a less than favorable employee situation.

Allowing one specific employee to create an account, business listing, website, domain host or anything else related to the business gives them the power to delete, change or hold your assets hostage if they leave or are terminated in a negative way. Or even if they don’t do anything with the accounts, there’s still the chance of losing passwords, not being aware of certain accounts or listings and wasting time making up these lost resources.

Keep It Generic for All

Knowing this, I emphasize the importance of using a generic email account when creating any kind of business asset or account for your business – and keeping ALL accounts listed in one place. A simple and good example is using businessname@gmail.com for all accounts.

Storing the passwords is also important. Our recommended process is to keep a list of a all credentials in a password-protected account – so someone has to use their business login to get access to a login. If the password on an account is updated, it gets updated in the place it’s stored so everyone can get access to the new one. Each person has their own login to get access to it and it can be easily terminated by IT.

It is much easier to change a password every so often then to lose the ability to retrieve the assets for YOUR business. And make sure to implement a plan with Human Resources and IT to change that password BEFORE a termination. It may not protect you 100% depending on the situation, but it will safeguard you against most chances of losing your assets.