Ending a retainer without a mess

Last publish date, last day of community coverage, last invoice. Three dates. Put them in writing. "End of the month" is how a post goes out on the 2nd by accident.

Decide what happens to scheduled posts after the last day. Unschedule them unless the client explicitly wants them to run with nobody watching.

Final exports, captions, a list of logins you will stop using, and where the brand kit lives. Do this in their space or a transfer they control. A link that dies when you close the seat is not a handover.

You do not have to hand over internal scratch work. You do have to hand over what they paid to own. Check the contract if you are unsure, and do not invent a policy mid-argument.

Take your seats off their ad accounts, inboxes, and scheduling tools. Remove their people from your portal. Shared passwords get rotated. Write a checklist and tick it.

The person who leaves the agency is not the person who remembers every login. The checklist is the memory.

What is live, what is scheduled to be killed, who to contact if a post misfires next week. No pitch unless they ask. Endings that upsell are hard to trust.

Keep the note. You may need it if a stray post survives.