The 5 Accounts That Can Take Your Business Down Tomorrow
Five logins, three checks each. Ten minutes, and you'll know where you stand.
Every business runs on a handful of accounts that were set up years ago by whoever was handy at the time. A web designer. A former office manager. A nephew. Nobody has looked at them since, because nothing has broken.
That's the trap. An account nobody looks at is fine right up until the day it isn't: the card on file expires, the person who set it up leaves badly, or someone guesses a password from 2014. Then the website is down, or the Google listing says you're closed, or the ad account is spending money you can't stop. The damage lands all at once, and it always looks like it came out of nowhere.
For each account below, log in and check three things. Tick what's true. Be honest with the boxes; nobody sees this but you.
Three questions, five times
The same three checks apply to every account. Is the login in the business's name, on an email address you control? Is two-step verification turned on? And if you were locked out tomorrow, could you get back in without calling someone who no longer works for you?
Your domain registrar
If this lapses, or someone else holds it, your website and your email stop on the same day. Domains expire on a schedule nobody sets a reminder for, and the renewal notice goes to whatever address was used to buy it, which is often the web designer's.
Your business email
Email is the account that recovers every other account. Every "forgot password" link on this page lands here. Whoever controls this mailbox controls all five, which is why it's the one to check most carefully.
Your Google Business Profile
For most local businesses, more customers see this than the website. Whoever is listed as the profile's owner can change your hours, your phone number, your address, or mark you permanently closed. Profiles set up by an old agency in 2019 are still owned by that agency.
Your ad accounts
There's a card on file and a budget running. If the account belongs to an agency, leaving them means leaving your history, your audiences, and everything that was learned about what works. If it belongs to a former employee, the spend keeps going and you can't stop it.
Your payment processor and bank login
This is the money. It's also the one where a former bookkeeper or office manager most often still has a working login, because removing them was nobody's job on their last day.
Where you stand
Your score: ______ of 15. Count the ticked boxes.
Or have it emailed to you, with the fix for every box you didn't tick.
Email me my result and the fix sheet
Enter your email and I'll send your score, the boxes you didn't tick, and the specific steps for each one, in plain language, in the order I'd do them. Most take one sitting. If you ticked all fifteen, I'll tell you when to re-run this and nothing else.
Where your leads land
There's an account that isn't on this list because it isn't a login: wherever your website's contact form sends its submissions. If that's a vendor's inbox, or a form plugin only your web designer can see, your leads are in someone else's hands even though the website is "yours". That's a different checklist, and it's the one I'd run next.
If you want the wider version of this, the small business tech scorecard covers twenty questions across your website, your Google listing, your reviews, your analytics, and your email list. The who owns your website page goes deeper on the registrar and hosting side.