Seasonal retail runs on speed. You take on temporary staff for the rush, get them onto the till system and the rota app on their first shift, and worry about the admin later. It is entirely reasonable in the moment. The problem is that ‘later' rarely arrives, and the accounts you created in a hurry outlive the people who used them by months.

The pattern we see is consistent: twelve temporary accounts created in December, and three of them still active and untouched in March. A live account nobody is using is a gift to anyone who finds the password, and on shared shop systems those passwords get written down, reused and passed around. Every dormant login is a way into your takings and your customer data that you are no longer watching.

The reason it happens is that creating access is part of the job of hiring, and removing it is nobody's job in particular. The fix is to make the ending as routine as the start. When someone is taken on for a fixed period, set the account to expire at the end of it if your system allows, and put their last day in the same place you put their first.

It does not need a system to solve, just a habit. Keep one simple list of who has a login and when they finish. Run it on the first of each month and disable anything belonging to someone who has gone. Ten minutes monthly means that by March the only accounts still live are the ones that should be, and a lost or shared password from December is no longer a live door.