Introduction
Ask an owner who owns their domain and the answer is almost always yes, of course we do. Then someone goes looking and it is registered to a developer who built the site years ago, under an email address at a business that no longer trades.
This is rarely anyone being dishonest. Access accumulates. A supplier sets something up quickly to get moving, the account stays in their name because nobody thought about it again, and the business grows on top of it. The fix is a register and an afternoon spent checking.
Which accounts to check
Anything that would be painful to lose or slow to rebuild belongs on the list.
- The domain, and the settings that point it at your website and your email. Losing this is the one that stops the business, not just the marketing.
- Hosting and the website code, including wherever the site is deployed from.
- Analytics and whatever measurement is installed on the site.
- Google Business Profile, which for a local service business is often the single most valuable asset in the list.
- Advertising accounts and the tracking they use, on Google, Meta and anywhere else you have spent money.
- Social profiles, including the ones a contractor created for a campaign and never handed back.
- Customer data. The CRM, the job system, the enquiry inbox and the spreadsheet somebody still runs the real business from.
- Phone numbers, call tracking, booking tools and review platforms.
- Billing. Which card pays for each of these, and what happens to the account when that card expires.
How to check each one this week
Open a spreadsheet with a row for each account above. Give it columns for who holds the highest level of access, which email address that access sits under, who is billed, and whether you were able to sign in yourself without asking anyone.
Then go through them one at a time.
- Sign in yourself. Not through a supplier’s screen share, not through a saved session on someone else’s laptop. If you cannot get in on your own device, write no in the last column and keep going.
- Look at the email address the account belongs to. This is where most surprises are. A personal address belonging to a staff member who left, a supplier’s shared inbox, or an address on a domain the business no longer controls are all common and all fixable.
- Look at who else has access and at what level. You are looking for anyone who can remove you.
- Check who is billed. An account you cannot pay for is an account you do not really control.
- Write down what you find, including the ones you could not check. The blank rows are the finding.
That spreadsheet is the ownership register. Keep it, and review it whenever a supplier changes or someone leaves.
Administrator, or just a user?
The goal is not that only you can touch anything. Your suppliers need real access to do real work, and taking it away creates slower, worse work.
The goal is that your business holds the top level on every account, and everyone else has their own named access at the level their job needs. Named access matters because it can be removed on the day it should be, and because you can see who changed what. Shared logins passed around by email fail both tests.
Exit readiness, without the drama
Most suppliers hand things over without a fuss. The reason to check anyway is that you should never be finding out under pressure, in the middle of a dispute, a staff exit or a business sale.
Exit readiness is a plain question. Could you change suppliers this month without losing the domain, the customer data, the ad history or the reviews? If the answer is yes, every supplier you keep is one you are choosing to keep. That is a healthier arrangement for both sides, and it is how we prefer to be engaged.
Why it matters more once everything is connected
While the accounts are separate, sloppy ownership is an administrative nuisance. Once the enquiry path, the CRM, the automations and the advertising all feed one operating view, those accounts stop being marketing housekeeping and start being the business record.
An owner who holds the accounts can change any supplier without changing the system. An owner who does not can only change suppliers by starting again. That is why we run the ownership register on every engagement rather than as an exit formality, and why our implementation standards treat access as something the owner approves before launch.
Bring the list to an Operations Review if you want a second set of eyes on it.
In 30 minutes we can tell you which gaps matter and which can wait.
FAQs
My web developer registered the domain for me. Is that a problem?
It is very common and usually fine, but it should not stay that way. The domain belongs in an account your business controls, with your billing on it. A reasonable developer will move it without complaint. If moving it turns into a negotiation, you have learned something useful.
The person who set up our accounts has left. What now?
Start with the accounts that have a recovery path through a verified business detail, such as the domain and anything tied to your business phone or address. Some platforms have a formal recovery process for exactly this. Expect it to be slow, and treat the experience as the reason to keep the register current.
Should our agency have access at all?
Yes, at the level the work needs, under their own named access, granted by you and removable by you. Careful access control is not a sign of distrust. It is what makes it easy to work with people you do trust.
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