Troubleshooting Team Member Removal and Replacement in Sprout Social

This article provides a comprehensive guide for seamlessly removing or replacing team members in Sprout Social.

Understanding Team Member Removal and Replacement

When a team member leaves your organization, it is important to manage their transition out of your Sprout Social account effectively. This ensures the security of your social media profiles, maintains your content pipeline, and prevents any disruption to your team's workflows.

Properly removing a team member involves more than just deleting their profile. It requires careful consideration of their role, responsibilities, and any pending tasks or content they own. Replacing a team member involves transferring these responsibilities to ensure a smooth handover.

Depending on your Sprout plan level, there will be multiple ways to ensure a successful transition:  

• Standard & Professional Plans: How do I set up Groups and users in Sprout?
• Advanced Plan: How do I manage users in Sprout?

How do I remove a team member that is not the Account Owner?

If you are on the Standard or Professional Sprout Plan, a Sprout user with the “Manage Users” permission can take the following steps to remove another user in Sprout: 

1. Navigate to Settings > Account > Team Members.
2. Select the trash icon next to the individual you wish to remove.
3. Confirm the removal. 

If you are on the Advanced Sprout Plan, a Sprout user with the “Manage Users” permission can take the following steps to remove another user in Sprout: 

1. Navigate to Settings > Account > Roles & Team Members.
2. Select the Teams & Members tab in the top bar of this view.
3. Scroll down to the Team Members section.
4. Select the trash icon next to the individual you wish to remove.
5. Confirm the removal.

What happens when you remove a team member?

When you remove a user from your Sprout account, you can expect the following: 

• Any content the user had scheduled, added to the Sprout Queue or saved as a Draft remains active in Sprout. The content will still be attributed to the inactive user’s name within the Publishing Activity.
• All Cases assigned to the user will update to “Unassigned” and will remain in the same Queue to which they were originally assigned. The removed user and their contributions to Cases will still be included in the Case Management Report. They will be noted as an inactive user in the report. 

If you are on the Professional or Advanced Plan and utilizing Approval Workflows in Sprout, users listed as an approver in a workflow who are removed from Sprout will result in a blank approval step. We would advise reviewing any workflows before the removal to ensure that a new team member is assigned as an approver.

How do I remove a team member if they are the Account Owner?

The Account Owner has the highest level of permissions in a Sprout Social account. Therefore, their removal or replacement requires a specific process which involves changing Account Ownership. 

To begin this process, a user logged in as the current Account Owner should follow the detailed steps outlined in our “How do I transfer account ownership?” article. 

• If your organization doesn't have access to the login credentials of the current Account Owner but you or your IT team have access to their email inbox, you can gain access to the account by requesting a password reset to their email address.
• If that option isn't available, we advise reaching out to Sprout Support for assistance requesting an account owner transfer. 

Once the new Account Owner is designated, the previous Account Owner will be converted to a regular team member with full administrative privileges. They can then be removed from the account by the new Account Owner if necessary.

How do I manage a smooth transition between old and new team members?

If you are on the Professional or Advanced Plan and utilizing Approval Workflows in Sprout, be sure to review any workflows in which the outgoing team member may have been listed and update approvers as needed. 

For Cases, we advise using Queues and Automated Routing to ensure any unassigned Cases are quickly reassigned to available team members. 

If you are on the Advanced Plan, we highly recommend taking advantage of our Organization Roles and Profile Permissions Sets to easily scale your team and provide users with preset Sprout permissions and profile assignments that match their role with your organization. 

Billing and seat management considerations when replacing team members

Removing a team member doesn't automatically reduce the number of paid seats on your plan. Instead, the seat becomes vacant until the next billing cycle. This means you can invite a new team member to fill the vacant seat at no additional cost.

To prevent any unexpected charges, we recommend always removing the team member that’s being replaced first before inviting the new team member as a replacement.

FAQs

How do I resend an invitation to a team member?

A Sprout user with the “Manage Users” permission can navigate to the “Team Members” view within Settings where they see the pending user listed, as well as the option to either “Resend” or “Revoke” their invitation. Proceed with “Resend.” 

How do I change the email address associated with a team member?

A user who is not the Account Owner can only be updated by logging into Sprout directly as that user. Navigate to Settings > Personal Settings to edit their name and email, which requires the current password of this user to authorize. A password reset option is available should that be needed. If you don't have the user’s current login credentials, we advise removing the user and sending a new invitation instead. 

How can I replace my own user seat for another team member to take over?

If you are the current Account Owner, follow the detailed steps outlined in our “How do I transfer account ownership?” article. If you aren't the Account Owner, navigate to Settings > Personal Settings to edit your name and email to the intended user and then advise the user to reset their password using our password reset  link. 

What happens to the content created by a team member after I remove them?

Any content the user had scheduled, added to the Sprout Queue or saved as a Draft remains active in Sprout. The content will still be attributed to the inactive user’s name within the Publishing Activity.

What happens to Sprout Cases assigned to the team member I removed?

All Cases assigned to the user will update to “Unassigned” and will remain in the same Queue to which they were originally assigned. The removed user and their contributions to Cases will still be included in the Case Management Report. They will be noted as an inactive user in the report.

How do I change the Account Owner in Sprout Social?

Any user logged in as the current Account Owner should follow the detailed steps outlined in our “How do I transfer account ownership?” article. 

What should I do if the Account Owner has left the company and we can't access their account?

If your organization doesn't have access to the login credentials of the current Account Owner but you or your IT team have access to their email inbox, you can gain access to the account by requesting a password reset to their email address and then proceed with the steps outlined in our “How do I transfer account ownership?" article. If that option isn't available, we advise reaching out to Sprout Support for assistance requesting an account owner transfer. 

How do I make sure our message approval process doesn't break when a team member leaves?

Users listed as an approver in a workflow who are removed from Sprout will result in a blank approval step. We advise reviewing any workflows before the removal to ensure that a new team member is assigned as an approver.