Agency handoff SGEN — client transition playbook

How to complete an agency-to-client handoff with training, access transfer, and support setup

Transfer full ownership of a SGEN site from an agency to the client's in-house team: promote the client to Administrator, remove agency credentials, deliver a site documentation handoff pack, and establish the support workflow before the agency engagement closes.

This playbook is the standard pattern for a clean SGEN handoff. It uses three existing admin features — Users, Site Settings, and Export — combined with a structured documentation and training sequence.

No proprietary handoff tool required — the full workflow runs inside SGEN and a shared document.

Total time: approximately four hours across two sessions: two hours for site documentation and training preparation, and two hours for the live handoff session with the client team.

What is this for?

A site handoff is not just a transfer of credentials. It is the point at which the client's team becomes capable of operating the site independently.

A handoff that consists only of "here is the admin password" creates immediate support debt. Within weeks, the client cannot remember how to update a page, cannot find the form submissions, and cannot understand why the popup is showing. The agency receives support requests for tasks the client should be able to handle alone.

A structured handoff invests two to four hours upfront to eliminate that debt. The client leaves the handoff session knowing where everything is, how the key workflows operate, and where to find documentation when they have questions.

The handoff has five components:

1. Site inventory — a written record of every major feature in use and where it lives.
2. Training session — a live walkthrough of the admin with the client's team.
3. Access transfer — promoting the client to Administrator and removing agency credentials.
4. Site export — a backup of the current site state delivered to the client.
5. Support setup — documenting where the client goes for help after handoff.

Good use cases

Acme Coffee Roasters — full site build handoff. An agency built the Acme Coffee Roasters SGEN site over three months. The site includes a blog, an ecommerce store, a popup, and a custom CSS layer. The agency prepares a site inventory document covering every feature in use, runs a two-hour live training session with the Acme marketing manager and the Acme operations lead, transfers Administrator access to both contacts, removes the agency's own admin accounts, exports the current site state as a backup, and sends a handoff summary document with support contacts.

Acme Bakery — content-only handoff to existing team. The Acme Bakery site was built six months ago. The agency has been managing content since launch. The client's new content manager is now in place. The handoff is scoped to content operations only: blog post creation, form submission review, and media management. The client's content manager receives an Editor-level user account (not Administrator) and a 90-minute walkthrough covering only the content-relevant admin areas.

Acme Wine Studio — partial handoff with retained agency support. The agency retains responsibility for the site build and technical maintenance but hands off content operations to the Wine Studio team. The agency creates two user accounts for the Wine Studio team (Editor role) and trains them on blog, pages, and media. The agency retains one Administrator account for ongoing build work. The handoff document clearly delineates: "client team manages content; agency manages site structure, custom codes, and ecommerce configuration."

Acme Coffee Roasters wholesale — team role reassignment. The wholesale team is taking over site management from the main marketing team. No agency involved — this is an internal handoff. The same playbook applies: a site inventory, a training session for the new operators, updated user accounts reflecting the new ownership, and a revised support contact list.

Acme Studio — emergency handoff mid-project. The primary agency contact leaves mid-project. A client-side manager needs immediate, functional access to the SGEN admin so the site does not go unmanaged during the transition. An emergency handoff covers the minimum: Administrator access transferred, a brief inventory of what is live and what is in progress, and a list of the three most critical operational tasks with step-by-step instructions.

What NOT to use this for

How this connects to other features

Before you start

Suggested handoff structure:

• You are the agency Administrator on the SGEN site.
• You have confirmed the client's key contacts: who will receive Administrator access, who will be the day-to-day content manager, and who is responsible for billing.
• The site is in a stable, tested state before the handoff session. No unfinished builds, no active bugs, no pages in an inconsistent state. The handoff delivers a known-good site, not a work-in-progress.
• The client has been briefed on the handoff structure and has confirmed attendance at the training session with the relevant team members.
• You have prepared the site inventory document before the training session (see step 1). The training session is for demonstration and questions, not for writing documentation.

Where to go

The handoff touches four admin areas:

1. Users → Add New — create Administrator accounts for the client's contacts
2. Users → Edit — remove or deactivate agency accounts after access is confirmed
3. Site Settings — review and update site ownership settings
4. Tools → Export — generate the handoff site export

Steps — Complete the agency-to-client handoff

1. Prepare the site inventory document

Before the training session, write a site inventory document covering every major feature in use on the site. This document is the client's reference for what is on their site and where to find it.

The inventory document should include:

Active pages — list every published page with its slug and its purpose. "Home page (/) — main landing page. About page (/about) — team and story. Wholesale page (/wholesale) — B2B enquiry form."

Blog — number of published posts, categories in use, any scheduled posts.

Forms — list every active form with its name and where it is embedded. "Contact form (ID: 3) — embedded on Contact page. Wholesale enquiry form (ID: 7) — embedded on Wholesale page."

Ecommerce — number of products, active coupon codes, any configured payment gateway notes.

Custom Codes — list every Custom Code snippet with its name, placement, and current Status. "Google Analytics tag — Head scripts — Active. Black Friday banner — Body Start — Inactive (archived from last campaign)."

Active popups — list every popup with its name and current Status.

Media — note any naming conventions or folder structure used in Media so the client can maintain it consistently.

This document is written before the training session and shared with the client during or after. A well-written inventory is the single most valuable deliverable of the handoff.

2. Create Administrator accounts for the client's contacts

Open Users → Add New and create one account for each client contact who needs Administrator access.

For each account:

• Set First Name, Last Name, and Email to the client contact's details.
• Set Role to Administrator.
• Leave Send the new user an email checked. The client contact receives their login credentials automatically.
• Use a consistent username pattern: firstname.lastname@clientdomain.com.

Create the Administrator accounts before the training session so the client contacts can log in during the session and follow along in the admin rather than just watching.

3. Run the training session walkthrough

During the live training session, walk through the admin with the client team logged in to their own Administrator accounts.

Cover the following areas in this order, spending roughly 10–15 minutes per area:

Pages — open the Pages list, show the Publish/Draft workflow, demonstrate creating a simple page and updating content. The client should leave knowing how to update page text, change Status, and find a page by slug.

Blog — open the Blog list, show how to create a new post, add categories and tags, set the author, and publish. Show how to schedule a post for future publication.

Forms — open the Forms list, show the submissions view for each active form, and demonstrate the CSV export. The client should leave knowing where form submissions land and how to export them.

Media — show the upload flow, the WebP conversion toggle, and how to find an uploaded file URL.

Ecommerce (if applicable) — cover the Orders list, the Coupons list, and basic order management.

Custom Codes — show each active snippet, explain its purpose, and explicitly advise which snippets should never be modified without agency consultation.

Users — show how to create a new user, change a role, and deactivate an account. This is the area the client will use when a new team member joins.

Allow questions throughout. The goal is not to cover every feature; it is to make the client comfortable with the areas they will use in the first 90 days.

4. Review and update Site Settings

Open Site Settings and work through the key fields with the client during the training session:

• Site Name — confirm it matches the client's brand, not the agency's internal project name.
• Admin Email — update from the agency's email to the client's operational email address. This is the address that receives form submission notifications and system alerts.
• Domain settings — confirm the primary domain is correct.

Set any settings that still reflect agency ownership to the client's details before the session ends.

5. Transfer access and remove agency accounts

After the client confirms they can log in successfully with their new Administrator accounts, remove or deactivate the agency's own accounts.

For each agency account:

• Open Users, find the agency account, click Edit.
• Confirm the account's role, then decide: Delete or set to Inactive.
• Delete if the engagement is fully closed and no future agency access is anticipated.
• Set to Inactive if the engagement may resume or if you want to retain the account history without active login access.

Before removing any agency account, confirm:

1. The client Administrator can log in and access the full admin.
2. At least two client contacts have Administrator access so a single point of failure does not lock the client out.
3. All work in progress has been completed or handed over to the client's team.

Do not delete agency accounts until the client has confirmed successful login.

6. Generate the site export and deliver the handoff pack

Open Tools → Export and generate a full site export. Download the export file and include it in the handoff pack delivered to the client.

The handoff pack is a single document (or shared folder) containing:

• Site inventory document (from step 1).
• Site export file (from this step) — labelled with the handoff date.
• Key admin URLs — the admin login URL, the public site URL, any staging site URLs.
• Support contacts — who the client contacts for SGEN platform support, and who the client contacts for any ongoing agency services (if any retained scope exists).
• Credentials document — a secure record of the client's new admin login details. Delivered via a password manager or secure file share, not via plain email.

Send the handoff pack the same day as the training session.

What success looks like

What to do if it does not work