Handle Customer Offboarding

A customer is leaving. This recipe covers cancelling entitlements, handling data retention, archiving the Organization, what is preserved versus deleted, and the Cancellation Policy grace period.

Prerequisites

• WordPress admin access.
• The customer has communicated their intent to leave, or a payment failure has exhausted the recovery period.
• You know which entitlements and resources are affected.

Steps

Part A: Review active entitlements

Step 1. Go to MIDDAG Account > Organizations and open the customer's Organization.

Step 2. Navigate to the Entitlements tab. List all entitlements with status active or suspended.

Step 3. For each entitlement, note:

• The class (PLG, ENV, SVC, ORD, AFL, EDU).
• Downstream resources attached (licenses, environments, services, contracts, credit balances).
• Whether there is remaining credit balance or prepaid time.

Part B: Cancel entitlements

Step 4. For voluntary cancellation (customer requested):

1. Open each entitlement.
2. Click Cancel Entitlement.
3. Select the cancellation reason (dropdown: customer request, business closure, switching provider, etc.).
4. Add optional notes.
5. Click Confirm Cancellation.

Step 5. The Cancellation Policy determines what happens next. Check the policy values:

Setting	Default	What it means
portal_visibility_days	90	How long the cancelled entitlement remains visible in the portal.
data_retention_days	365	How long data is retained before purging.
allow_reactivation	true	Whether the entitlement can be reactivated after cancellation.
reactivation_window_days	90	How many days after cancellation reactivation is allowed.
refund_eligible	false	Whether the customer is eligible for a prorated refund.

Step 6. For cancellation due to payment failure: the system auto-cancels after the grace period expires (default: 30 days). See Suspend for Non-Payment. No manual action needed unless you want to intervene.

Part C: Downstream resource cleanup

Step 7. When an entitlement is cancelled, the ProvisioningPolicy's deprovision_on_cancel setting governs what happens to downstream resources:

PLG entitlements:

• License status transitions to cancelled.
• Existing site activations stop receiving updates but continue functioning on the currently installed version.
• Download access is revoked.

ENV entitlements:

• Environment record is marked deprovisioned.
• The admin should export customer data from the environment before shutting down the server.
• Schedule infrastructure teardown according to your data retention policy.

SVC entitlements:

• Service record transitions to cancelled.
• Open service requests are completed or cancelled (admin review required).
• Contract transitions to cancelled.
• Remaining credit balance is frozen (no new consumption).

Step 8. For environments, export customer data before teardown:

1. Go to the Environment record.
2. Click Export Data (if the platform supports automated export) or manually create a backup.
3. Provide the export to the customer.

Part D: Data retention period

Step 9. After cancellation, data enters the retention period (default: 365 days). During this time:

• All Organization data (entitlements, orders, invoices, contracts, documents) is preserved in the database but no longer visible in the customer portal after portal_visibility_days expires.
• The admin can still access all data from the WordPress admin panel.
• The customer can request a data export at any time during the retention period.

Step 10. Offer the customer a data export:

1. Go to the Organization detail page.
2. Click Generate Data Export.
3. The system creates a ZIP file containing the Organization's entitlements, orders, invoices, contracts, and documents.
4. Send the download link to the customer.

Part E: Archive the Organization

Step 11. Once all entitlements are cancelled and the customer has been notified:

1. Go to the Organization detail page.
2. Click Archive Organization.
3. Confirm the action.

Step 12. An archived Organization:

• Is no longer visible in the default Organization list (use the "Show Archived" filter to find it).
• Cannot accept new quotes or orders.
• Collaborator portal access is disabled.
• All data remains in the database per the retention policy.

Part F: Reactivation (win-back)

Step 13. If the customer comes back within the reactivation window:

1. Open the archived Organization (use the "Show Archived" filter).
2. Click Unarchive Organization.
3. Open the cancelled entitlement(s) and click Reactivate.
4. Process a new payment or link a new order.
5. Downstream resources are re-provisioned.

Part G: Final data purge

Step 14. After the data_retention_days period expires, the system flags the Organization's data for purging. A cron job handles the purge:

• Entitlements, orders, invoices, and related records are permanently deleted.
• The Organization record itself is kept as a tombstone (name, tax ID, dates) for legal compliance.

Step 15. Review the purge queue under MIDDAG Account > Settings > Data Retention before the cron runs. You can extend retention for specific Organizations if needed.

Expected result

• All active entitlements are cancelled with a recorded reason.
• Downstream resources are cleaned up per the ProvisioningPolicy.
• The customer received a data export if requested.
• The Organization is archived -- no new transactions can occur.
• Data is retained for the configured period (default: 365 days) and purged afterward.

Further reading

• Suspension and Recovery -- the complete suspension-to-cancellation flow.
• Policies -- Cancellation Policy and data retention settings.
• Customer Lifecycle -- the full lifecycle from onboarding to offboarding.