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When someone leaves your team, Plane provides a structured offboarding process that handles the operational details—scheduling the termination, managing final pay, and cleaning up ongoing commitments. The process differs slightly by worker type, but the core steps are the same.

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Starting the offboarding process

To offboard a worker, go to their profile and select the option to terminate their employment. You will need to provide:
  • Termination date—when the worker’s employment ends
  • Reason—why the worker is leaving
Once you submit the termination, Plane records it and begins the offboarding process. What happens next depends on the worker type.
You can only terminate a worker who has completed onboarding and is currently active. If someone is still onboarding and you need to remove them, archive their profile instead—this cancels any pending onboarding tasks.

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What happens during offboarding

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Contractors

Contractor offboarding completes immediately. When you terminate a contractor:
  • The termination date is recorded on their employment record
  • If the contractor has an active agreement, it is terminated and the contractor receives a notification
  • The contractor is removed from any active pay schedules
  • The offboarding is marked as completed right away
If the contractor has an active agreement with a notice period, be aware of the notice period requirements when choosing a termination date.

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W-2 employees (US)

For W-2 employees on your own payroll, offboarding also completes immediately:
  • The termination date and end date are recorded
  • The employee is removed from their pay schedule
  • Final payroll is handled as part of the regular payroll cycle or as a final pay run

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EOR employees (international)

EOR employee offboarding is more involved because Plane acts as the legal employer. When you terminate an EOR employee:
  • The termination request is submitted and Plane’s team is notified
  • The offboarding enters a started state while Plane coordinates the legal and operational steps
  • Local labor law requirements (notice periods, severance, final pay calculations) are handled by Plane’s team
  • Once everything is resolved, the offboarding moves to completed
EOR terminations may take time to complete due to local employment law requirements. Plane’s team will keep you updated on the process.

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Cancelling an offboarding

If you initiated a termination by mistake, you can cancel it. Cancelling an offboarding:
  • Reverses the termination—the worker’s end date is cleared
  • Restores the worker’s employment status to active (or pending, if their start date is in the future)
  • If an agreement was terminated as part of the process, the agreement termination can be reversed as well
Go to the worker’s profile and cancel the offboarding to undo it.

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Archiving workers

After a worker has been offboarded (or if their onboarding was cancelled), you can archive their profile. Archiving is a separate step from termination—it removes the worker from your active lists while preserving all their historical data. When you archive a worker:
  • They are removed from the active workers list
  • All historical data is preserved—payment history, documents, agreements, and profile information remain accessible
  • For contractors and vendors, any pending payment requests are automatically rejected and pending expenses are declined
  • Any remaining pay schedule assignments are cleaned up

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Employees vs contractors and vendors

  • Employees can only be archived after their employment has been terminated or cancelled. If you try to archive an active employee, Plane will ask you to terminate them first.
  • Contractors and vendors can be archived at any time. Archiving a contractor also cancels any in-progress onboarding.

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Re-activating workers

If you need to bring back someone who was terminated, you can undo the termination from the worker’s profile. This:
  • Clears the end date on their employment
  • Restores their employment status to active
  • Reverses any agreement termination (if applicable)
Undoing a termination is different from un-archiving. If a worker was both terminated and archived, you would need to un-archive them and then undo the termination to fully restore their active status.
If you need to re-engage a contractor or vendor after a long absence, it may be simpler to add them as a new worker. This ensures their onboarding documents and compliance information are current.
No. Archiving only removes the worker from your active lists. All data—payment history, documents, agreements, and profile information—is preserved and remains accessible.
For contractors and vendors, archiving rejects pending payment requests and declines pending expenses. For employees, final pay is handled through the regular payroll process. Make sure any outstanding payments are settled before or during the offboarding process.
Not through the termination flow—termination requires the worker to be active. Instead, archive the worker’s profile directly. This cancels any pending onboarding tasks and removes them from active lists.