Transferring Ownership of a Base?

[Jena_Marshall]

A few years back I set up a base for one of our clients who was new to Airtable. I invited them as a collaborator to the base to start to familiarize them with the system. Since then we have been paying for both us and them as a collaborator on the base. The time has come that we want to transfer owernship of the base to them completely so they will both be managing and paying for the base. How do I go about doing that? Do I invite them as an owner and then delete them as a collaborator? How do I remove myself as an owner for the base? How do we get them set up to be billed for the base?

[WilliamPorter · Accepted solution]

@Jena_marshall,

Welcome to the Airtable Community!

The trick here is that you don’t do this by modifying the sharing inside the base. You have to do it by modifying sharing for a workspace.

So

1. In your account, move the base to a new workspace. Call it something like “Base Transfer”.
2. Click Share for the new workspace (Base Transfer) and invite your client to join it as an Owner.
3. Tell your client to accept the invite, then log into their account. They’ll see the base in the new workspace (“Base Transfer”). Tell them to click the sharing button for the workspace.
4. They will now see both you and themselves listed as Owners of the workspace. They should downgrade you to read only or commenter or if you and they agree, they can just delete you completely.

Note that at no time in the above process does anybody actually open the base itself. It’s all done in the workspace.

Make sense?

William

[David_Galetar]

Quick follow-up please…

I built a base for a friend, and I wanted to keep a copy for myself.

After I followed your very clear instructions and replicated the base in my personal Airtable account I deleted all of the data. But then I realized, there was a Jotform and several zap’s that fed data into the base.

How will they be effected by such a ‘base’ transfer? Will they still feed into my replicated base?

Thanks,

DG

[kuovonne]

David_Galetar:

How will they be effected by such a ‘base’ transfer?

The Jotform and Zaps will still feed into only the original base. Note that if you used your API key to connect these services and you are no longer an editor on the original base, one of you will need to update the connections to use an API key of the current owner. Also, if the Jotform and Zaps are in your Jotform/Zapier account, you should also probably transfer them to your friend (or have your friend re-create them).

If you want a fully functioning copy of the base (that includes the Jotform and Zaps, you will need to duplicate them for your new base.

[David_Galetar]

kuovonne:

one of you will need to update the connections to use an API key of the current owner.

Already taken care of! I built ALL OF IT under their company name. :upside_down_face:

BUT, while I have my Airtable guru here, is there ANY chance I can BEG you to circle back around on my other standing issue, Serious Mental Block! Trouble linking tables?

I’ve tried all of the standard troubleshooting ideas you suggested, and no matter how I try I can’t get it to work!

Please… :bouquet:

[kuovonne]

David_Galetar:

Already taken care of! I built ALL OF IT under their company name.

Awesome!

David_Galetar:

is there ANY chance I can BEG you to circle back around on my other standing issue,

I don’t see you posting in that other thread? Do you have two accounts on this community with different names?

I’m afraid that I reached the end of the troubleshooting that I can do on that thread with the information available in the community. I also am not currently accepting new clients, so I can’t do an online consult where I could provide more in depth troubleshooting.

[David_Galetar]

Yes, I have one account for my neighbors business and one for me.

And you can’t blame a guy for trying!?!

Thanks for ALL of your continued help!

DG

[Erika879]

Thanks William. It makes sense. We are the client and we want the agency to transfer ownership to us. We asked them to share the workspace and this was their answer: Sharing the workspaces shares all the bases across clients within our agency - the "Creator" Access is the max access we are able to provide with a base via airtable!

Please let me know how they can handle that on their side