Whether you keep the laptops when a contract ends depends entirely on which of three arrangements you signed, and a surprising number of teams do not know which one they are on. The exit clauses decide it, and they are written at the start when nobody is thinking about leaving.
TL;DR
- Owned, leased and subscribed produce completely different exits. Know which you are on before anything else.
- Under a subscription you usually keep nothing, which is the trade rather than a trap.
- Stock sitting in the vendor’s warehouse at termination is the most expensive loose end in any exit.
- Data deletion is a separate question from device ownership, and the register holds every employee’s home address.
- Devices with departed employees at termination fall into a gap unless somebody names who chases them.
- Nobody in this category publishes a price, so exit costs are equally unpublished. Ask before signing.
Three arrangements, three exits
| Arrangement | What you keep | The catch |
| You own the hardware | Everything | You also keep disposal and resale |
| Lease or finance | Depends on buyout terms | Residual value at term is the whole question |
| Subscription or service | Usually nothing | Return logistics may be chargeable |
None of these is wrong. A subscription leaving you with no hardware is the arrangement working as designed, and the per-person cost reflected it the whole time. The problem is only ever that somebody assumed a different row.
The quickest way to find out which row you are on is to search your own contract for the word title rather than ownership, since that is the term most agreements actually use. If it does not appear anywhere, ask the vendor to confirm the position in writing, and expect a straightforward answer, because this is not a contentious question until somebody is leaving.
The four clauses that decide the cost
Who owns the hardware at termination, stated explicitly rather than implied by the pricing model. This is the one sentence that matters most and it should be findable in under a minute.
What happens to stock they are holding. Spares, returns awaiting redeployment and anything bought ahead. Shipping it out, storing it past the end date and disposing of it all cost money, and the rate is rarely agreed in advance.
What you get as a data export, and what gets deleted. The asset register with full history, in a named format, plus a deletion commitment with a timescale.
Who chases devices still with departed employees. At termination there are usually several collections in progress, and those fall between two vendors unless somebody owns them by name.
The data question is separate
Device ownership and data handling are different clauses and teams routinely settle the first while ignoring the second.
An equipment platform holds every employee’s name, home address and often a phone number, because that is where machines get shipped. That is personal data sitting with a third party, and when the relationship ends it should not simply persist.
Ask three things: what is retained after termination, for how long, and whether anything persists in backups beyond that. Get it in writing at signature rather than at exit, when your ability to ask for anything has largely gone.
Running the exit
What to do:
- Export the full asset register with history before giving notice, and keep it outside both platforms.
- Read the ownership clause and confirm in writing which of the three arrangements you are on.
- Agree the fate of warehouse stock before notice, with a storage end date and a rate if it overruns.
- List every collection in progress and name who owns each one through the transition.
- Get the deletion commitment, with a timescale, and diarise a check that it happened.
- Reconcile the register against the new vendor at the end of the overlap, before closing the old account.
Notice periods matter here more than in most contracts. Thirty days is not enough to ship stock out of a warehouse, complete in-flight collections and reconcile two registers, so check the period and start earlier than it requires.
Two further items are worth settling in the same conversation. Warranties usually follow the device rather than the vendor, which is good news, and the claim paperwork frequently sits with the outgoing platform. Ask for warranty records as part of the export rather than assuming they travel with the hardware.
And check what the outgoing vendor does with devices already in their possession at the end date. A machine collected from a leaver two weeks before termination is sitting in their warehouse and belongs to whoever the ownership clause says it does. That is a small number of devices and an awkward conversation if nobody raised it.
How the vendors differ on exit
Firstbase runs a subscription, so the baseline expectation is that hardware goes back. That is the model rather than a penalty, and it should be priced into the comparison from the start.
Workwize holds stock in its own warehouses, which makes the stock-at-termination question sharper than for partner-network vendors. Its domain is now goworkwize.com. GroWrk and allwhere scope per customer, so exit terms are negotiable at signature and worth negotiating then. Deel IT ties devices to employment, so ending one relationship may affect both.
Disclosure: RemoAsset is owned by the same people who publish PeopleOpsHQ. It publishes no price and requires a demo, which means exit terms are a conversation rather than a published schedule, the same as every vendor here. It is also weaker for hardware it did not supply and is not a device management system. The set is compared in our laptop procurement platform comparison.
Final thoughts
Exit terms get agreed when nobody is leaving, which is exactly why they end up unexamined. Four sentences in the contract decide whether a termination is a month of administration or an unbudgeted expense.
Find out which of the three arrangements you are on, settle the warehouse stock in writing, treat data deletion as its own question, and name somebody for the collections in flight. If you are signing rather than leaving, ask all four now, because the answers are far easier to obtain before the relationship has an end date attached.
Frequently asked questions
Do you keep the laptops when an equipment contract ends?
It depends which of three arrangements you signed. If you own the hardware you keep everything including the disposal problem, under a lease it depends entirely on the buyout and residual terms, and under a subscription you usually keep nothing. The last one is the model working as designed rather than a trap, and the per-person cost reflected it throughout.
What is the most expensive part of leaving a platform?
Stock the vendor is holding for you at termination, whether spares, returns awaiting redeployment or machines bought ahead. Shipping it out, storing it past the end date and disposing of it all cost money, and the rate is rarely agreed in advance, so settle its fate and a storage end date in writing before giving notice rather than after.
What happens to employee data held by the platform?
That is a separate clause from device ownership and it gets ignored far more often. The platform holds every employee’s name, home address and often a phone number because that is where machines ship, so ask what is retained after termination, for how long, and whether anything persists in backups, and get it in writing at signature.
Who chases devices with leavers during a transition?
Nobody, unless you name somebody, which is why collections in progress are where real machines disappear during an exit. List every open collection before the transition starts and assign each one to a named person on one side or the other, because a device sitting with a former employee while two vendors each assume the other owns it is the standard way this fails.
Is thirty days notice enough to leave?
Usually not. Shipping stock out of a warehouse, completing in-flight collections and reconciling two registers against each other takes longer than a month in practice, so check your notice period and begin the work earlier than it strictly requires. Starting late is what turns an orderly transition into devices nobody can account for six months later.
Can exit terms be negotiated at signature?
Yes, and that is the only realistic time to do it, particularly with vendors who scope arrangements per customer rather than selling fixed tiers. Ask for the ownership position stated explicitly, a rate for storage past termination, a named export format with a deletion timescale, and clarity on who handles open collections, all of which are reasonable asks before you have signed anything.
