Leaving a Salesforce org - whether at the end of a project, a contract, or a job - can be a high-stakes move, both for your professional reputation and the organisation you leave behind. A well-managed handover keeps your CRM system running smoothly, while a rushed or incomplete transition can leave behind broken automations, inaccessible dashboards, or operational confusion. The tips below, learned from often painful experiences, can help you leave your Salesforce org the right way.
Build Like You’ll Leave Tomorrow
Even if you’ve only just joined an organisation, it’s wise to build your Salesforce org as if your departure could happen with two weeks’ notice. Document your work early and often, sharing screenshots and Loom recordings to create a mini support archive. Maintain a central, accessible home for your documentation and keep it updated. And crucially: create a public read-only folder for the reports and dashboards used for annual reporting. If those key metrics sit only in your memory or private folders, chances are no one will be able to reproduce them the following year!
When creating fields, flows, permission sets or integrations within Salesforce, use the description fields to record what the asset does, why it exists, and any dependencies. This saves your successor countless hours of detective work and reduces the risk of unexpected errors caused by mysterious, undocumented automation.
Win Hearts and Minds
A Salesforce org can only thrive when the organisation believes in it. As an admin or project manager, part of your role is cultivating a supportive internal community - people who trust the data, follow agreed processes, and champion the system to others.
From the start, set up a working group (or “Centre of Excellence”), which includes representatives from different teams and an enthusiastic executive sponsor who regularly uses dashboards in meetings. When staff see that data is actively used in decision-making, they’re far more likely to enter it accurately and consistently.
Prepare Your Organisation
When you leave, your Salesforce org will carry your fingerprints - your username will be linked to all the fields, flows, layouts and integrations you’ve created.
However, where possible, integrations shouldn’t run from your user account. Instead, where possible, use a dedicated integration user licence. Use custom labels rather than hard-coding User IDs and email addresses into flows and actively remove outdated fields, unused apps, or abandoned automations. Reducing technical debt is an underrated act of kindness to the next person.
Manage Access, Ownership and Responsibility
Before you go, review everything tied to your user account. Check who the running user is for dashboards and scheduled reports. Confirm default lead or case owners. Review approval processes and identify whether any steps rely solely on you.
Sometimes these responsibilities can be shared among several people - but ideally, if you’re the System Admin, you should handover your core tasks to another qualified System Admin. If hiring isn’t possible immediately, an agency like Blaze Your Trail can help bridge the gap.
Final Housekeeping
In your final days, log into Salesforce Setup and run a thorough audit. Review sandboxes and deploy or document any unfinished work. Check connected apps and revoke access to tools no longer in use. Transfer any integrations still linked to your account and confirm data continues flowing as expected. And don’t forget exception emails: redirect Apex and flow error messages to someone who will act on them.
With these steps, your org will stay strong long after you’ve moved on. Maybe your organisation or client won’t need to say “we don’t know what we’d do without you” - because they will know what to do. But they’ll definitely appreciate what you’ve done.
Download the Departing Salesforce Admin Checklist here
