Handle employee exits smoothly and professionally
Offboarding is the process of managing an employee's departure from your company. Whether someone resigns, retires, or is terminated, a proper offboarding process ensures a clean transition, protects your business, and maintains accurate records for compliance purposes.
Many businesses focus heavily on onboarding but overlook offboarding. This can lead to incomplete records, missed final payments, and compliance issues down the road. A structured exit process benefits both the employer and the departing employee.
Why Offboarding Matters
A proper offboarding process helps your business in several ways:
- Accurate Records ensure your employee data reflects who is currently on your team and who has left.
- Final Pay Compliance guarantees departing employees receive their last salary, unused leave payouts, and any outstanding claims.
- Asset Recovery tracks company equipment and inventory that needs to be returned.
- Tax Reporting requires accurate end dates and final income figures for IRAS submissions.
- Historical Reference keeps past employee records accessible for audits, references, or rehiring.
What to Do When an Employee Leaves
When someone leaves your company, there are several steps to complete:
- Record the End Date to mark when their employment officially ends.
- Process Final Payslip including any outstanding salary, leave encashment, or deductions.
- Settle Outstanding Claims by approving or rejecting any pending expense claims.
- Collect Company Assets such as laptops, phones, access cards, or other inventory items.
- Update Employee Status to Inactive or Terminated so they no longer appear in your active team list.
- Complete Compliance Records ensuring their data is accurate for year-end tax submissions.
How Officaid Handles Offboarding
In Officaid, offboarding is managed through the employee's profile in the Directory. When an employee leaves, you update their status and record their departure details.
The Directory has two tabs: Active and Inactive. When you change an employee's status to Inactive or Terminated, they move from the Active tab to the Inactive tab. Their complete profile and history remain in the system for your records.
Employee Exit Checklist
Use this checklist when an employee leaves your company:
- Process and send final payslip
- Settle any pending expense claims
- Calculate and pay out unused leave if applicable
- Collect company equipment and update inventory records
- Record the end date and reason for leaving
- Update employee status to Inactive or Terminated
- Ensure records are complete for tax reporting
Modes of Leaving
In Officaid, you can record why an employee left. This helps with reporting and identifying patterns in your workforce:
- Resignation when an employee chooses to leave voluntarily.
- Termination when the company ends the employment relationship.
- End of Contract when a fixed-term contract expires.
- Retirement when an employee retires from the workforce.
- Other for situations that do not fit the above categories.
Frequently Asked Questions
Rather than deleting, Officaid uses status changes to manage departures. Setting an employee to Inactive or Terminated removes them from your active list while preserving their records for compliance and historical reference.
All historical data remains attached to their profile. You can access their payslip history, claims, documents, and other records from the Inactive tab at any time.
Yes. If you need to bring someone back, you can update their status back to Active and adjust their employment details as needed. Their previous history remains intact.
For tax purposes, the departing employee's income will be included in your yearly IRAS submission. If the employee is a foreigner leaving Singapore, additional tax clearance requirements may apply.
What's Next?
Learn more about managing your team throughout their employment journey:
- Deactivating an Employee walks you through the steps to mark someone as no longer active.
- Viewing and Sending Payslips covers how to process and deliver final pay.
- Assigning Inventory to Employees explains how to track and recover company assets.