Managing access when the organization owner leaves
This article addresses frequently asked questions after an organization owner has left a company. If organization ownership was not transferred prior to the owner leaving, one of the following scenarios may apply to your organization.
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Bitwarden support is unable to disclose the identity of an organization's current owner. This information can only be verified with the organization's owner directly. To facilitate a seamless process, we recommend reaching out to support using the owner's registered email address.
If you have access to the owner's account credentials:
Access the Admin console to invite a new owner or transfer ownership: If you have the credentials of the owner account, you may directly access the organization's admin console. This will allow you to perform several tasks including inviting a new owner, transferring ownership, and making necessary changes.
Backup the organization data: Ensure that all important organizational data is backed up to prevent data loss in the future. Learn more here.
Set up admins or backup owners for access redundancy: Ensure that multiple admins or backup owners are in place for future access continuity and management of the account.
Are there any current admins in the organization?
Contact support using the previous owner's email: Contact support using the owner's email. If there are admins set up, you may request that support promote one of them to the owner role. If the owner email no longer exists, please recreate the inbox.
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Support will only perform admin promotion if the request comes from the owner's email address. There are no exceptions to this policy.
Attempt to recover the account: If no admins exist, you will need to manually back up your organization data and start over as soon as possible. To backup the organization information:
Export organizational vault data using the Bitwarden export. This requires a user to have a custom role with access to import/export.
If no users have custom role with access to Bitwarden export, users may manually copy & paste data for an export of organization vault data.
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If the organization's subscription lapses before you can perform a backup, please contact support to request a temporary service activation in order to export organizational data.
Do you have access to the owner or billing contact email?
If you do have access to the owner or billing contact email address:
Contact support using the owner or billing contact email address: If the subscription is still active, you may cancel it by contacting Bitwarden support using the email associated with the billing account.
You may cancel future renewals of an active subscription by contacting Bitwarden support using the email associated as an organization owner, or the billing contact. The authorized billing contact is the email address that receives invoices, payment reminders, and receipts.
If you do not have access to the owner or billing contact email address:
Contact support and provide default payment method details: You may authorize the removal of a payment method by contacting support and providing the following payment method details:
Expiration date of the card used in the last payment.
Last 4 digits of the card used for the last payment.
Date of the last payment.
Amount of the last payment.
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This information will help Bitwarden support confirm your identity and process the cancellation request, see here for additional information.
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For technical, billing, and product questions, please contact support