The day a rep gives notice, the instinct is to lock the door. Turn off the login, protect the data, sort out the rest later. It feels responsible.

In HubSpot, it’s the step that hides the problem.

Below is the order to run it in, with what HubSpot does if you skip a step. Each behavior links to HubSpot’s own knowledge base, so you can check it against your portal before you start.

What happens to a rep’s deals when you deactivate them in HubSpot?

Nothing moves. HubSpot’s knowledge base says a deactivated user “will remain assigned to their records,” and their profile and data stay for “reporting and forecasting” (HubSpot, Deactivate and remove HubSpot users, updated September 28, 2026). The rep can’t log in anymore, but their open deals still sit under their name in your pipeline views and your forecast.

Turning off the login protects the account. It does nothing for the pipeline.

HubSpot’s own recommendation points the same way: “It’s recommended that you reassign any assets the user owns before you deactivate the users.” So deactivation goes near the bottom of this list, not the top.

Before you touch anything: export the rep’s open book

Before you reassign a single record, filter your deals, contacts and companies to the departing owner, save each filter as a view, and export it. HubSpot’s export downloads records’ “current property values and associations” (HubSpot, Export your records, updated April 2, 2026). The file is a snapshot of what the rep owned the day you pulled it, and it’s the list you check your work against.

Two things to know about that snapshot. Calls, notes and other contact activities aren’t part of it; HubSpot points you to separate routes for those, such as an individual contact data export, certain activity reports or the engagements API. And the saved views do double duty. You’ll run them again at the end to confirm the old owner’s name is gone.

How do you reassign deals, contacts and companies in bulk?

From each object’s index page, select the departing rep’s records, click Assign, choose the new owner and tick “Reassign all incomplete tasks” before you click Update. HubSpot’s instructions say that checkbox reassigns all incomplete tasks to the new owner along with the records (HubSpot, Set a record owner, updated October 9, 2026). Work through companies first, then contacts, then deals.

If the deals moved and the to-do list stayed behind, that checkbox is the first place to look.

If the book is splitting across several reps, build one saved view per new owner and run the bulk Assign once per view. You can also assign owners to existing records in bulk through an import, with the owner column in your file mapped to the owner property.

One setting to check while you’re in there. If “Assign company owner to contact by default” is turned on in your account, HubSpot assigns contacts and their primary company to the same owner. HubSpot’s page doesn’t say whether that setting reassigns existing contacts when you change a company’s owner, so check your contacts view after you move the companies instead of assuming the contacts followed.

Bulk assign moves records and their incomplete tasks. Anything it missed still sits with the old owner. Filter the tasks index by the departing rep and bulk edit what’s left, review their sequence enrollments before you deactivate them, and transfer each of their scheduling pages first, because deactivating a user stops their public meeting links from working.

Tasks. On the tasks index, filter by the old owner, select the tasks and click Edit. HubSpot applies “the same property value” to all selected tasks (HubSpot, Edit or delete tasks, updated October 9, 2026), so you can hand the leftovers to their new owner in one pass.

Sequences. A deactivated user is “unable to log new emails to the CRM, including any scheduled sequence emails” (HubSpot, Deactivate and remove HubSpot users). Look at who the rep has enrolled and decide who picks up each conversation before you switch them off. HubSpot’s page doesn’t say what happens to the enrollments themselves, so don’t plan around a guess.

Meeting links. If you deactivate a user without removing them, their scheduling pages aren’t deleted, but “the public links will stop working” (HubSpot, Manage scheduling pages, updated September 3, 2026). That’s the link wherever the rep shared it. A Super Admin can transfer the page to another owner before you deactivate, and meetings booked through it then go to the new owner.

Why do leads stop getting routed after a rep leaves?

HubSpot’s rotate-owner action leaves deactivated users out of assignments, and when no eligible user is left in a rule, “no owner will be assigned” (HubSpot, Assign and rotate record owners using workflows, updated September 23, 2026). A rule where the departing rep was the only name hands new leads to no one. HubSpot also says to remove the user by hand from filters that name them, such as workflow criteria.

The routing rule does give you a visual cue: deactivated users show with a red border. That helps if someone opens the rule. It doesn’t help if no one does.

Search your workflows and lists for the rep’s name, swap in the new owner, and do it before you deactivate, so new leads keep landing on a person. If your routing has grown past a couple of rules, how lead routing works in HubSpot covers the setup in more depth.

Deactivate or remove the user?

Deactivate once the book has moved. Remove only if you’re sure. HubSpot requires a user to be deactivated before removal, and “when you remove a user, you cannot restore that user” (HubSpot, Deactivate and remove HubSpot users). Removal also unassigns their conversations, takes them out of reports and deletes the scheduling pages they created, so transfer those pages before you remove anyone.

Stopping at deactivation keeps the rep’s profile and data for reporting and forecasting, so your historical reports keep their name on the deals they worked. That’s a reason to stop there. Whether you go further comes down to how much you want their history in your reports.

How do you check nothing was left behind?

Run the saved views from the export step again. Each one should come back empty for the old owner. Then open a sample of the deals you moved and look at property history, which shows each value change, the date and time it happened and its source (HubSpot, View a record’s property history, updated October 16, 2026). An owner change with today’s date on it is a move that stuck.

Deals that slip through tend to surface later as stalled deals no one is touching or as a forecast that doesn’t match the pipeline. The same audit works for other ownership changes, like the handoff from sales to customer success.

A manual check covers what you think to look for. The free CRM Diagnostic runs 40+ automated checks across data quality, pipeline hygiene, freshness, reachability and ICP fit, including records still owned by people who no longer work there.

The afternoon they give notice, or the end of the quarter

You can run this checklist the afternoon a rep gives notice, while they’re still around to tell you which deals are live and which are hopeful. Or you can find their orphaned pipeline at quarter end, when the forecast misses and someone asks whose deals those were.

The work is the same either way. Only one of those days has the rep still in the building.

If you’d rather see what’s already sitting under former owners before you start, book the free CRM Diagnostic.