Relationship owner and processor

Who holds the relationship with a contact, who processes it temporarily and how to hand a contact over to a colleague.

Checked against the app · 24 October 2026Open in the app

What it is for

Every relationship has an owner who is responsible for it. Another member, the processor, can also work on the contact temporarily. This lets you share the work without changing who the relationship belongs to.

How to

Hand over a contact for processing

  1. In the contact detail, in the Relationship section, click Hand over for processing.
  2. In the Choose a member list, pick a colleague and confirm.

The contact moves to your colleague's My action plan with the label For owner: and disappears from yours. The owner stays the same.

End processing

  • The processor clicks Return to owner.
  • The owner or an admin clicks End processing.

The contact returns to the owner's work.

Good to know

  • Each relationship has one owner. Usually it is the person who brought the contact in: took it with the side panel, picked it up from New contacts or imported it.
  • A member becomes the processor when the owner or an admin hands the contact over to them, or when the contact is in their action plan batch. When the plan is closed, the contacts return to their owners.
  • In My action plan you have your own contacts without a processor and the contacts you are processing for colleagues.
  • The side panel on LinkedIn shows who is handling the contact: the processor, otherwise the owner.
  • Any member with write access can record a step, a note and a follow-up on a contact. The owner and processor roles determine whose work it is and who manages the contact.
  • Only the owner and an admin can close the relationship, hand it over for processing and set the cadence.
  • Changing the owner is up to admins and the workspace owner, in bulk in the detail of a list: select the people and choose Change owner. Only open shared relationships change; private contacts and a person with whom the new owner would have two relationships are skipped. The processor does not change.
  • A private contact (Private) has only you as its owner. It cannot be handed over for processing or added to an action plan.
  • The owner of a relationship is not the same as the space owner. Roles in the space are described in the article on roles.

Frequently asked questions

I handed over a contact. Will I still see it?

Yes. You still see the contact in People & relationships and in the detail, it is just not in your action plan.

Why can I not hand over a contact?

You can only hand over a contact that has no processor yet, and only to an active member with write access.

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