Transferring ownership

Every Scout HQ workspace has exactly one Owner — the one accountable person for the workspace. When that person leaves the company or hands the operation to someone else, the Owner seat moves by a transfer. This article explains what the Owner holds that nobody else does, what a transfer changes, and how to arrange one.

The People and roles page, where each person's workspace role is listed and only one person holds Owner.

Screenshot: one person holds Owner; everyone else is an Admin, Member, or Viewer.

What only the Owner can do

An Admin can do nearly everything an Owner can: invite and deactivate people, manage roles and teams, configure connections, assign work across teams, review cross-employee visibility, and mute items for everyone. The page itself puts it in four words — an Admin has "Full access and visibility except billing."

Four things stay with the Owner:

Plan and billing. Changing plan, seeing invoices, and seeing payment details. Admins can see which plan the workspace is on and nothing more — the payment row reads "Hidden" for them. See Plan and billing.
Deleting the workspace. The Delete this workspace control on the General page is Owner-only.
Transferring ownership itself.
Signing the Letter of Authorization that names Scout as your workspace's service provider when Scout requests PromoStandards credentials from a supplier on your behalf.

What a transfer changes, and what it does not

A transfer is a single, audited change between two people:

The person you name becomes the Owner.
You become an Admin — you are not removed, and you keep everything an Admin can do.
The successor must already be an active member of the workspace. You cannot transfer to an email address that has not accepted an invitation yet, so invite them and wait for them to join first. See Inviting people.
Notices about connection problems, which are addressed to the workspace's administrators, are re-pointed to the new set of administrators in the same change.

Nothing else moves. Teams and team memberships stay as they are. Assignments and claims stay with the people and teams holding them. Connections stay connected, and personal mailboxes stay with the people who own them — a change of Owner does not give the new Owner anybody's personal mail. Settled work, receipts, and activity history stay attributed to whoever did the work.

How to transfer ownership

Transferring ownership is an Owner-only action, and a self-serve control for it is not on the People & roles page today. To arrange a transfer, contact Scout support from the current Owner's account and include:

The workspace name, and the Workspace ID from Settings → Workspace → General (the row is labelled "Used by support").
The name and email address of the person who should become Owner, who must already be an active member.
Confirmation that you understand you will become an Admin in the same change.

Never include a password in a support message. Scout support will never ask for one.

When you need to do this

Before the Owner leaves. The Owner's seat cannot be deactivated while they hold ownership — Scout refuses with "Transfer ownership before deactivating the Owner seat." Transfer first, then deactivate the old seat if you no longer need it.
When the person paying stops being the person running the shop. Billing follows ownership, so the Owner should be someone who can act on a payment problem.
Before a supplier credential program starts. The Letter of Authorization is signed by the Owner, so the transfer should happen before that paperwork rather than in the middle of it.

Good to know

There is never more than one Owner. Ownership is a single seat, not a group you can add people to — if two people need administrative reach, make the second one an Admin.
The transfer is recorded like every other change in Scout, with your name, the successor's name, and the time. That record cannot be edited afterwards.
A transfer is not a data move. Nothing is exported, nothing is re-derived, and no point changes state.
If the Owner has already left and cannot sign in, contact support with the workspace name and the Workspace ID. Support will verify who may authorize the change before doing anything.