What Should You Export Before You Cancel Your Accounting Software?

If you're ready to stop paying for accounting software, save your records before you cancel. Download transactions, invoices, bills, payments, contacts and categories, plus every year's financial reports. Check that your downloaded records reproduce the software's yearly totals. Check separately for invoice PDFs, attached files and bank rules, because Xero's data download left them out for me. Keep a checked backup somewhere you control, then cancel.

Key takeaways

• Rebuild each year's totals from your download and compare them with the software's own reports before you cancel.
• Check separately for the invoice PDFs your clients received, the files attached inside the books and your bank rules.
• Confirm the company name before downloading, because one login can cover several businesses.
• Look twice at suspiciously round record counts, like a list ending at exactly 300.
• Give every step its own checklist line, and cancel only after the backup is copied.

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What happens to your records when you cancel accounting software?

With Xero, you have a one-month notice period after canceling. After that, nobody can log in. There's no read-only plan for looking up old records. Xero keeps the data for up to seven years, but you need to reactivate a paid plan to get back in.

I had two businesses paying $27 a month each for Xero. I mostly used it for year-end reports and occasional invoices. Before canceling, I worried about losing records I might need for an audit or just need to look up. With Claude's help, I was surprised how easy the download and checking turned out to be.

I canceled both subscriptions on October 12, 2026, after checking the saved records. Those access details are specific to Xero. If you use QuickBooks or another service, check its cancellation terms before choosing your last day.

What should you download before you cancel?

Save the individual records as well as the reports that summarize them. A yearly total won't tell you which payment made up part of that total.

• Every bank and PayPal transaction, including bank lines you haven't assigned to a category.
• Invoices, bills and payments.
• Contacts and categories, the labels used to group money coming in and going out.
• Each year's profit and loss report, which shows income, expenses and the difference between them.
• Each year's balance sheet, which shows what the business owns and owes at a particular date.
• Each year's trial balance. Ask your accountant whether they need this report too.

I used Claude, Anthropic's AI, in Claude Code. It connected through Xero's official data connection. Every permission was set to view only. That allowed the download without giving it permission to change the books.

The result is now on my own computer in files that open in Excel. For my businesses, I could keep the books going with bank, PayPal and marketplace downloads. Check with your accountant about what they need from you before deciding whether that approach fits your business.

What does a standard export leave out?

Save the documents around the transactions too. In my experience, getting the financial data out was only part of the job.

Invoice PDFs your clients received

Xero's data connection returned 353 invoices as data. That didn't give me the actual documents clients received. I separately saved PDFs for all 114 invoices sent to real clients. The larger count alone wouldn't have told me those documents were missing.

Files attached inside the books

Check the files stored alongside your entries. In one company's books, I found 184 raw marketplace payout reports going back seven years. Those were separate files I wanted to keep with the financial records.

Bank rules

Bank rules tell the software how to categorize familiar transactions. Xero doesn't let you export them. I rebuilt mine separately using a year I had already categorized. Put this on your list while you can still see how the old setup works.

The detail behind yearly totals

The data connection didn't include the report listing every transaction behind each year's profit. It also left out bank lines that hadn't been categorized. I checked for the missing transaction report and the uncategorized bank lines separately.

How do you know the export is complete?

Rebuild each year's totals from the downloaded transactions and compare them with the software's own reports. In my experience, that gave me a much better check than seeing a folder full of files.

With Claude's help, I rebuilt the missing transaction report. Each year's profit matched Xero's figure to the cent, across eight years for one business and four for the other. That checked the yearly totals. I still had to check the separate documents and attachments.

I also looked into anything that seemed odd. The contact list stopped at exactly 300, so I checked whether there was a fourth page of results. There wasn't. A round number can be correct, but I wanted to check rather than assume.

My login covered three companies, and the wrong company came back first twice. So the download program now stops if the company name doesn't match the business I want. Check the name inside the records too, rather than relying only on the folder name you gave them.

If you plan to keep your books without the subscription, my post on rebuilding a year of books from bank statements explains the work involved.

How long should you keep the records?

Ask your accountant which records you need and how long to keep them. The IRS gives a general three-year period in its record retention guidance, along with situations requiring longer:

• Six years if you don't report income you should have reported and it exceeds 25% of the gross income shown on the return.
• Seven years for a claim involving a loss from worthless securities or a bad debt deduction.
• At least four years for employment tax records.

Each of those applies to a different situation, so one deadline won't cover everything in your folder. I don't prepare or file tax returns for clients. Have your accountant tell you which requirements apply before deleting old records.

You can choose how to keep the records. The IRS says on its recordkeeping page: "You may choose any recordkeeping system suited to your business that clearly shows your income and expenses."

What steps should you follow before canceling?

Work through these in order, with each action on its own line. I once put "copy the backup, then cancel" on one line. When the copy step was marked done, it looked as though the cancellation was done too.

1. Ask your accountant what reports and supporting documents they need from you.
2. Confirm the business name and the years covered by your download.
3. Collect the transaction records and yearly reports listed above.
4. Gather client invoice PDFs, attached files and the information needed to rebuild bank rules.
5. Compare rebuilt yearly totals with the software's figures and look into any differences.
6. Open the saved files and write a short note explaining what's in each folder.
7. Check that the backup doesn't contain the login token, the code that lets a program into your account.
8. Copy the checked files to an external drive.
9. Cancel the subscription after confirming the copy is there.

If you're handing records to your accountant, see the free checklist for when you hand over your books.

Bookkeeping help before you cancel

I offer bookkeeping help for small businesses. Tell me which software you use and what you need to keep doing after you cancel.

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Frequently asked questions

Can I cancel Xero and still look up an old invoice later?

You can look up records during the one-month notice period. After that, Xero requires a paid reactivation for access. Save the invoice documents you need before that access ends.

Does matching the yearly totals prove I saved every document?

Matching totals checks the financial figures. My totals matched even though I still needed to save client invoice PDFs and attached payout reports separately. Check both the numbers and the documents.

Do I need to use AI to do this?

My process used Claude, but the checks are things you can ask a bookkeeper to help with too. Ask for a list of what was downloaded, what needed separate saving and how the totals were checked.

Will the backup take up much space?

My two backups were 1.7 MB and 6.6 MB. File size didn't tell me whether they were complete. Checking the records against Xero's reports, and checking separately for the documents it left out, did.

Should I delete older records once I've moved everything?

Keep them until you've checked the retention requirements with your accountant. Canceling a subscription doesn't change how long you need the underlying records.