Kandji vs Rippling IT for an Agency's Client Ad Accounts

An agency laptop typically holds saved logins or active sessions for a handful of clients' ad platforms, analytics accounts, and social channels, any of which can spend a client's budget or post under a client's brand if misused. That's a different risk profile than most B2B service work, closer to holding a set of keys to someone else's storefront than to holding documents. Device encryption and screen lock protect the laptop if it's lost; they don't protect a client's ad account if credentials are still active after a freelancer's contract ends, which is the more common failure mode in practice and the one that actually costs an agency a client relationship, sometimes long after the freelancer themselves has forgotten they still had access at all.

Most agency creative and strategy staff work on Macs, and Kandji's fast, pre-built setup matters for a business that onboards freelance help on short notice for a single campaign or launch. Getting a freelancer's laptop encrypted and baseline-compliant in under an hour, rather than over a day, is a real advantage when a campaign timeline doesn't leave room to wait on IT. Its lighter agent also stays out of the way of design software and heavy local media files that creative work generates, which matters more here than at a typical office job where the heaviest local file is a spreadsheet.

Agencies that rotate freelancers in and out by project get more value from Rippling's tie between device access and the same employment or contractor record used for payments. When a freelancer's contract ends in the system, their device access and any credentials tied to their account can be revoked from that same place, rather than depending on a project manager remembering to notify IT separately during a busy launch week. For an agency running several campaigns with different freelance rosters at once, that reduces the number of stale accounts sitting around after a project wraps, and reduces how much of the offboarding depends on a single overworked project manager's memory.

Wiping a departed freelancer's laptop doesn't revoke their access to a client's ad platform if that access was granted as a direct login rather than through the agency's own systems. The more durable fix is a habit independent of either MDM: grant client platform access through the agency's own managed accounts wherever the platform allows it, and remove a freelancer's access to client tools the same day their engagement ends, checked against a list rather than memory. Agencies that skip this step tend to discover the gap when a client asks why a former freelancer's name still shows up on their ad account's user list.

Reduce client-account exposure with these habits:

• Grant client platform access through the agency's own managed accounts, not direct logins that a freelancer holds personally.
• Revoke ad platform access separately from the laptop, since wiping a freelancer's device does not end a direct login.
• Offboard freelancers right after a campaign wraps, before the team scales back down and the next pitch takes priority.
• Get a freelancer's laptop encrypted and baseline-compliant quickly, using pre-built setup for short-notice hires.
• Tie device access to the contractor record used for payments if freelancers rotate in and out on nearly every campaign.

The riskiest moment for agencies isn't during a campaign, it's right after one wraps, when the team that was scaled up for launch scales back down quickly and offboarding gets deprioritized in favor of the next pitch. A freelancer's laptop and account access from the last campaign can sit forgotten for weeks while the agency moves on to the next client. Building offboarding into the project close-out checklist, not just the HR checklist, catches this before it becomes a habit, especially at agencies where the same handful of freelancers rotate through campaign after campaign.

An agency with a small core team and occasional freelance help can run comfortably on Kandji, treating freelancer offboarding as an infrequent manual task done carefully. An agency that staffs and unstaffs freelancers on nearly every campaign, and already manages contractor payments through Rippling, gets more recurring value from keeping device access tied to that same record automatically. Match the platform to how often your roster actually turns over, not to how it looks on a feature comparison, and revisit the choice if that turnover rate changes as the agency grows.