Canceling is easy and reversible for about as long as the vendor chooses. Exporting is the step people skip, and the one they miss most a year later when an auditor, a customer or a new hire asks where something went. This is a plain checklist: what to pull, in which formats, how to prove the file is complete, what to keep for the books, and what breaks when the account goes away.
Move and replace · guide 4 of 7 · Reviewed Oct 25, 2026
Start with the reason you might need the data again. There are usually four: running the work (projects, documents, contacts), proving something (invoices, approvals, contracts), answering a request (a customer asks what you agreed in March) and moving to a replacement. Each reason points to a different export, and the vendor's one big button rarely covers all of them.
Export rights are often narrower than use rights. A regular member may be able to download their own work and nothing else, while a full-workspace export needs an owner, an admin or a request that someone approves. Find that person first, because they may be the one who left last quarter.
Plan tier can change the scope. Do the export on the plan you have today, before downgrading to a cheaper one or letting a trial lapse. If the plan is about to change anyway, treat the export as the first task and the downgrade as the second.
Open the admin or settings area and look for export, backup or data download. Note which role it asks for.
If you cannot see it, ask the owner of the account. Do not wait until the last week of the term.
Read the vendor's export page for limits: what is left out, how long it can take, how long the download link works.
These are the routes five vendors describe on their own help pages, read on the checked date. Menu names move, so search the vendor's help center for the page by name. We list only what the pages say; where a page says nothing, we say so.
Prefer open, plain formats over a vendor's archive. A CSV opens in any spreadsheet, Markdown and HTML open in any browser or editor, PDF holds a document as it looked on the day, and JSON keeps structure that CSV flattens. An export that only the vendor's own tool can open is a copy in name only.
Do this before you cancel, while you can still go back to the live tool and run the export again. The vendor's progress message tells you the job ended; it does not tell you the file is right.
Write down record counts in the live tool: pages, boards, channels, contacts, invoices, files. Count the same things in the export.
Open the oldest items, the newest items and a few large or unusual ones. Check that attachments open, not just that their names appear.
For anything financial, total the export and compare it with your general ledger or the vendor's own billing history. The sums should agree to the cent.
Look for the gaps the vendor warned about: private items, files not included, history capped at a recent window, items the exporter could not see. Re-run as an account that can see more, if one exists.
Check the export status the vendor shows. Google, for example, reports Failed, Errors or Complete, and Errors means some data is missing.
Keep the original export untouched, open a copy to work with, and write the date and who ran it in a short note next to the files.
Exports for software that touched money are accounting records, not clutter. Keep the vendor's invoices and receipts for the tool itself, the order form and any email that changed the price, plus exports from tools that produced invoices, payroll, expenses or tax figures. Store them outside the vendor's cloud, in the place the rest of your financial records live, with access limited to the people who need them.
If you paid for the term in advance, the unused months sit in prepaid expenses until they release. Tell your bookkeeper the cancellation date so the schedule is closed or written off on purpose, not by accident.
How long to keep each kind of record, and whether personal data in an export carries its own limits on keeping or deleting it, depends on your jurisdiction and your contracts. We do not state a period here. Ask your CPA or counsel, and write the answer into your records policy.
There is no standard. Some keep the account readable for a while, some lock it at the end of the term, and some delete on a schedule that is only written in the terms or a support reply. The pages we read show the spread:
Whatever the answer, keep the vendor's reply. If you also want data removed sooner, ask for deletion in writing and ask for a confirmation once it is done. Do not rely on a blog's “30 to 90 days” as your vendor's rule; only the vendor's own terms count.
A tool is usually wired into other things, and the wiring is the part exports do not capture. Make a list before you cancel, using the admin console's connected apps or integrations screen, your single sign-on provider, your payment card statements and your team's chat for “we use X to…”.
Once the export is verified, cancel inside the notice window and keep the confirmation. Take a screenshot of the canceled state and save the confirmation email with the exports. Put a reminder a month later to check that the charge stopped and that no new one appeared on your card. For notice periods and fees, see canceling without penalties.
If you are replacing the tool, build the new one first and move the live work before you cancel. See consolidating into one suite, and find what else is still paying out with the software spend audit checklist. The browser audit reads a report on your own device and sends nothing out of the browser.
General information, not legal, tax or accounting advice. What you must keep, for how long, and what you must delete is a question for your CPA or counsel. The vendor details above are what each help page said on the checked date; plans and policies change, so read the page again on the day you export.
Send us the export and see which lines are worth a second look. A connected version is planned.