What your business should own.

The front door

• Your domain name Registered to your business or your name, and you can log in to the registrar. If it sits in your web person’s account you cannot move host, and a renewal can lapse without you hearing about it.
• Your Google Business Profile You are listed as the owner, not a manager. Owners can remove other people. Managers cannot, including when the manager is the one you want to remove.
• Your website and its hosting You hold the login, and the site can be exported. Otherwise a redesign starts from a blank page instead of from what you already paid for.
• Your business email On your own domain, and you control who has a mailbox. A gmail address ends when whoever set it up stops answering.

The money

• Your accounting file The subscription is in your business name. Your accountant should have access to it. They should not be the account holder.
• Your payment accounts Stripe, Square or PayPal in your business name, with your bank attached. Money should never arrive somewhere you cannot see.
• Your invoices and records Exportable, with a copy you hold off the platform. Every platform is one billing dispute away from read-only.

The work

• Your customer list Exportable as a file you keep. A list you can only see inside somebody else’s tool is not a list you own.
• Your files In an account the business owns, not a personal one. Personal accounts leave with the person.
• Your social accounts You are the owner or admin, not an editor. An editor cannot recover a page. An owner can.
• Any custom code or automations You have the source, or a written description of what runs where. Undocumented automations are the ones nobody dares turn off.
• A list of every login One place recording every account and who can get into it. This is the one that turns all of the above from a guess into a fact.