What you own at handover
You own everything you paid for. The code repository moves into your own code-hosting account (GitHub, for example), the design files move into your ownership, and every account the product runs on ends in your name. It's a standard term in every package, not an extra.
The checklist
Every handover covers these five, wherever they apply to your project:
- The code repository, where all your source code lives
- The design files, editable, so the next designer starts from ours
- The store accounts: Google Play, the Chrome Web Store, or whichever your product ships to
- The hosting accounts, along with the domain settings
- Every credential and password the product needs to run
Nothing stays on our side that you'd need to keep running it, change it or hand it to another team.
Whose accounts do we build on?
For hosting and services, yours if you like. Otherwise, test accounts.
You can bring your own hosting and service accounts from the start, so they sit in your name from the first milestone. If you'd rather not, we set up test accounts for your project and share them with you from day one, logins included. You can replace any of them with your own at any point.
Either way, there's no password exchange to arrange at the end: test-account logins are yours from day one, and your own accounts were yours all along.
Whose store account does the app ship from?
Yours, always.
An Android app ships from your own Play Console account, and an extension ships from your own Chrome Web Store developer account. There's no test account for a public listing, so the listing your customers find is never ours to give back, and nobody has to move it later. Before an Android app goes public, it's tested on Google Play's internal testing track, where only the testers you name can install it.
What moves, by kind of project
The checklist stays the same. What fills it depends on the work.
| Project | What ends up in your name |
|---|---|
| Web apps | the repository, the hosting account, the domain settings and every password |
| Mobile apps | the repository, the Play Console account, the signing key and every password |
| Browser extensions | the repository, the store developer account and every password |
| Desktop apps | the repository, the release accounts and every password |
| Graphic design | every source file and export, including the SVG masters |
| Video editing | the final files, the project files and the footage, with the licenses for any music and footage |
| QA testing and automation | the tests, the test plan and the accounts they run under |
| AI features and automation | the repository, the service accounts and every key |
Running costs are billed to your own accounts; Packages explained covers what they include.
Why does the signing key matter?
Google Play only accepts an update to your app when it's signed with the app's upload key and sent from the Play Console account the app belongs to. That's why the key is on the list, and why it ends in your name with that Play Console account.
What if I want another team to take over?
You can. That's the point of the handover. The repository, the accounts and the passwords are all yours, so another team starts from exactly what we had.
Next: Paying an invoice: where the payment methods are, and the reference to add.