# Exit Archive — Full Content > Full text of every blog post on this site. Exit Archive builds one-time, audit-ready archives of QuickBooks Online companies before the subscription gets cancelled. All content is for general information only. Not tax, legal, or accounting advice. - Source site: https://qbo-archiver-web.pages.dev/ - Index version: https://qbo-archiver-web.pages.dev/llms.txt --- # Blog Posts --- ## What Happens to Your QuickBooks Online Data When You Cancel? - URL: https://qbo-archiver-web.pages.dev/blog/what-happens-to-your-quickbooks-online-data-when-you-cancel/ - Category: guides - Published: 2026-07-07 QuickBooks Online keeps your data read-only for one year after you cancel, then deletes it permanently. Here is the exact timeline and what to export before it runs out. When you cancel a paid QuickBooks Online subscription, your books don't disappear right away. Intuit keeps your company in read-only mode for one year. You can log in, look at reports, and export data, but you can't add or change anything. After that year ends, Intuit deletes the company permanently. There is no way to recover it, and support can't restore it for you. If you cancelled during a free trial, the window is much shorter: 90 days. ## The timeline - **Day 0:** You cancel. Billing stops and the company switches to read-only. - **Months 0 to 12:** You can still log in, run reports, and export. You can also resubscribe and pick up where you left off. - **After 12 months:** The company and all of its data are permanently deleted. ## Why this catches business owners off guard Most people cancel QuickBooks when a business closes, gets sold, or moves to other software. At that moment, the books feel finished. The problem shows up one to seven years later, when a tax notice, an audit, a lawsuit, or a buyer's due-diligence request asks for a specific transaction and its receipt. The IRS generally expects you to produce records for at least three years, and up to seven in cases involving claimed losses or substantial underreporting. If fraud is alleged, or a return was never filed, there is no time limit at all. QuickBooks' one-year window doesn't come close to covering that. There is no archive plan or read-only tier you can pay less for. Business owners ask Intuit for one in the community forums every year, and the answer is always the same: keep paying for a full subscription, or export your data before the deadline. ## What to export before the window closes At minimum, a complete exit copy of your books needs: - **The general ledger** for the company's full history, in both cash and accrual basis if you ever filed on a different basis than you kept books. - **Year-end reports** for each fiscal year: profit and loss, balance sheet, trial balance. - **Every attachment**, meaning the receipts, bills, and documents attached to transactions. QuickBooks' built-in export tool does not include these. - **The audit log**, which shows who changed what and when. The attachments are where most do-it-yourself exports fall short. QuickBooks can export your receipts in bulk, but its own documentation notes that the files come out disconnected from the transactions they were attached to. You get a folder of PDFs and images with no record of which expense each one supports. Reconnecting them by hand across several years of books can take days. If you'd rather not spend those days, that's the problem this site exists to solve. We build [one complete, audit-ready archive](/) of your company, with every receipt still linked to its transaction, so you can cancel and keep proof of everything. --- ## How Long to Keep Business Records After Closing a Business - URL: https://qbo-archiver-web.pages.dev/blog/how-long-to-keep-business-records-after-closing/ - Category: guides - Published: 2026-07-07 The IRS can ask for records three to seven years after a business closes, and longer in some cases. Here is what to keep, for how long, and how to keep it accessible. Closing a business ends the operating work, but it doesn't end your obligation to keep records. The IRS can examine returns and request supporting documents for years after the final filing, and state agencies, lenders, and former partners can come asking too. ## The IRS retention windows The IRS publishes general guidance on how long to keep records, and the windows depend on the situation: - **Three years** is the baseline period for most returns. - **Four years** for employment tax records, counted from when the tax was due or paid. - **Six years** if a return understated income by more than 25 percent. - **Seven years** if you filed a claim for a loss from worthless securities or a bad-debt deduction. - **No limit** if a return was fraudulent, or was never filed. Most CPAs simplify this to a practical rule: keep everything for seven years after the final return, and keep anything related to assets, payroll, or ownership indefinitely. ## What "records" actually means An auditor doesn't just want to see totals. Supporting documentation includes invoices, receipts, bank statements, payroll records, and the ledger entries that tie them together. If your books show a $4,800 equipment purchase in 2024, the expectation is that you can produce the invoice or receipt behind it, not just the line item. That linkage matters. A folder of loose receipts and a separate spreadsheet of transactions technically contains the same information, but reconstructing which document supports which entry, under deadline, years later, is where closed-business audits get painful. ## The QuickBooks complication If your books live in QuickBooks Online, the retention math has a catch: Intuit deletes your data 12 months after you cancel the subscription. The IRS windows above run three to seven years. Keeping the cheapest QuickBooks plan alive just to bridge that gap costs roughly $35 a month at current prices, which works out to about $2,940 over seven years, per company. And QuickBooks prices have gone up every year for the last several. The alternative is exporting a complete copy of the books before cancelling. Done properly, that means the full general ledger, year-end reports for every fiscal year, every attachment with its transaction linkage intact, and the audit log. QuickBooks' built-in export covers the reports but drops the attachments and the audit log, so plan for those separately. ## A checklist for the wind-down 1. File the final federal and state returns, and mark them final. 2. Pull seven years of bank and credit card statements from each account before closing the accounts. Banks purge old statements too. 3. Export a complete archive of your accounting data, including attachments, before cancelling the software. 4. Store at least two copies in different places, and confirm you can actually open them. 5. Keep formation and dissolution paperwork permanently. If step 3 is the one you've been putting off, we do it as a service: [one audit-ready archive](/) of your QuickBooks Online company, verified against your live books, delivered as a single download. --- ## QuickBooks Online's Read-Only Year, Explained - URL: https://qbo-archiver-web.pages.dev/blog/quickbooks-online-read-only-year-explained/ - Category: guides - Published: 2026-07-07 What you can and can't do during the 12 months after cancelling QuickBooks Online, what the built-in exports miss, and how to use the window before it closes. After you cancel a paid QuickBooks Online subscription, your company enters read-only mode for 12 months. This window is your last chance to get data out, so it's worth knowing exactly what works, what doesn't, and where the built-in tools fall short. ## What still works in read-only mode - **Logging in.** Your credentials keep working, and so do those of other users on the account. - **Running reports.** Profit and loss, balance sheet, general ledger, transaction lists. You can view and export them. - **Exporting data.** The export tools remain available, including the Export Data page and report downloads to Excel. - **Viewing attachments.** Receipts and documents attached to transactions can still be opened and downloaded. - **Resubscribing.** If you change your mind, you can reactivate the subscription and the company comes back fully editable. ## What doesn't work - **Any edits.** You can't add, change, or delete transactions. - **Extending the window.** There is no way to pay for more read-only time, and no cheaper archive tier. After 12 months the company is deleted permanently. - **Trial accounts.** If you cancelled during a trial, you get 90 days, not a year. ## Where the built-in exports fall short QuickBooks' Export Data tool produces Excel files of your reports and lists. For a complete exit copy, three gaps matter: **Attachments lose their linkage.** You can bulk-export your receipts and documents, but Intuit's own documentation says the files export separately from the transactions they belong to, and you'll need to manage the matching manually. For a company with a few hundred receipts, rebuilding that mapping by hand is days of work. **The audit log isn't included.** The record of who changed what, and when, only exists inside QuickBooks. If a dispute or an examination ever raises questions about your books' history, you'll want it. **Backups are an Advanced-only feature.** The built-in backup and restore tool exists only on the Advanced plan, and it's built for restoring into QuickBooks, not for keeping records readable after the account is gone. ## How to use the window well Treat the read-only year as a deadline, not a comfort. Export the general ledger for the company's full history, the year-end reports for every fiscal year in both cash and accrual basis, every attachment, and the audit log. Verify the export against the live books before the window closes: count the attachments, tie the ledger to the trial balance, and open a sample of receipts. That verification step is the difference between having files and having proof. It's also the core of what we deliver: [a complete, verified archive](/) of your QuickBooks Online company, with every receipt still linked to its transaction, built while your read-only window is still open.