I’ve had several new clients come to me who were unfortunately locked out of their own important business accounts. Someone they hired, or a friend or family member, set everything up but never documented it or handed over the login details. Or they relied on their computer or phone’s password manager and something went wrong along the way. It’s nightmare stuff really, to lose access to your website hosting or Instagram passwords, especially if the recovery email or phone number is not your own.
The Spreadsheet
Whether I’m working on a personal project or something for a client, I always start out by setting up a Google sheet to track the details. It’s safe, it stays backed up on my computer, and is easy to update and share with my client as soon as I create it. It belongs to them the moment I make it. They can view it, edit it, copy it — whatever they need. It’s not my document. It’s theirs.
The structure is simple — five columns:
| Platform | Username | Password | URL | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SiteGround | hello@yourbiz.com | ••••••• | siteground.com/login | Hosting account |
| WordPress | hello@yourbiz.com | ••••••• | yourbiz.com/wp-admin | Main site login |
| Google Business | hello@yourbiz.com | ••••••• | business.google.com | Keep recovery email updated |
| @yourbiz | ••••••• | instagram.com | Connected to Facebook page |
What Goes In It
Every account that touches your online presence. At minimum:
- Website hosting login
- Domain registrar login (sometimes the same as hosting, sometimes not)
- Google Business Profile
- Social media accounts
- Email account
- Newsletter service, if you use one
And from there — every single time you create a new account for your business, add it to this document. Every time. Insist that whoever is helping or hired to work on your project does the same.
Keep this document private. Share it only with people you trust — your designer, your developer, maybe a business partner. Don’t share it publicly or email the link carelessly. It has the keys to your kingdom.
Why This Matters
You shouldn’t have to ask whoever is helping you with your online presence to document your own login information. It should just be a given. But it’s not always. And if you’re doing a lot of this legwork yourself, having everything in one place means that when you do hire someone to help — a designer, a developer, an SEO person — you hand them an organized file instead of a stressed-out memory.
It saves time. It saves money. It saves frustration.
Set it up once, keep it updated, and you’ll never be locked out of your own stuff again.