Cancelling your account and taking your data with you

If you leave, you should be able to take everything with you. That is not a courtesy, but the precondition for you to keep meeting your legal obligations.

There are three different things that often get lumped together: cancelling the subscription (you stop paying, the business carries on in the free plan), deleting the business (everything is locked and permanently deleted after 30 days) and taking your data with you (which you should do beforehand in both cases). This article goes through the three in the right order.

First: export

Do this before cancelling, and all the more so before deleting.

1. Download all closed months as CSV and PDF (Month-end close, step 4). This only works as long as your business is still on the Starter or Pro plan — the free plan has neither month-end close nor CSV export.
2. Download the full export: Settings → Data & deletion → **Export all data**. You get a single JSON file with business data, employees, time entries, absences, shifts, premium rules, pay periods, projects, change log, deletion log and the retention periods table. Not included are passwords, PINs and the contents of uploaded documents — for documents, only the metadata is included.
3. Save documents individually: You download sick notes, contracts and photos individually under Documents. They are deliberately not part of the JSON file, because sick notes are health data and every access to them is logged.
4. Download invoices under Settings → Subscription & billing.

The full export is not tied to any plan. Only the owner can trigger it, and every export is recorded in the change log.

How to cancel the subscription

Only the Owner role can cancel. The button is in Zeitflex itself, not at Stripe.

1. Open Settings → Subscription & billing.
2. In the box showing the term, click Cancel at end of term.
3. Alternatively, under the terms and conditions (in German), § 7, a cancellation in text form, i.e. an email to us, is sufficient.

Zeitflex then registers the cancellation with Stripe for the end of the current term:

• Monthly plans run for one month and renew for one further month each time.
• Annual plans run for twelve months and renew for a further twelve months each time.
• In both cases the subscription ends at the end of the period already paid for — you use what you have paid for right to the end. Which notice period applies contractually is set out in the terms and conditions (in German), § 7.

While the term is still running, Withdraw cancellation in the same box reverses the cancellation.

The Stripe customer portal, which the same tab offers, is something else: there you change the billing address, VAT identification number and payment method. The payment data is held by Stripe; Zeitflex never gets to see it.

As soon as the subscription ends at Stripe, Zeitflex automatically moves your business to the free plan. Your data is kept in full. Nothing is deleted, nobody is deactivated, no access is locked.

Only ending the subscription

If you want to keep the data but stop paying: cancel the subscription or downgrade to the free plan instead of deleting the business. Your records are kept in full; only the range of features shrinks. See Changing your plan.

In most cases this is the better route — especially while retention periods are still running. A deleted business cannot be restored once the 30 days have passed; a business on the free plan can be upgraded again at any time.

What the free plan lacks

The free plan is built for a single person. So that you know what no longer works after cancelling:

In concrete terms, after a cancellation this means:

• No more CSV export. The CSV export of the payroll transaction data, the export profiles for Lexware, Stotax, ADDISON or Sage and the Saldy file all depend on the feature “CSV export”, and the free plan does not have it. Therefore: **export first, then cancel.**
• No more month-end close. This includes the month-end close PDF.
• Only one active person. Existing people are kept in the database. New active people can only be created or invited again once a paid plan is active.
• The full export remains. It is not tied to any plan. So even on the free plan you can get to your data at any time — just as JSON, not as CSV.

Really deleting the business

1. Open Settings → Data & deletion.
2. At the very bottom, choose Delete business.
3. To confirm, type in the exact business name. A typo aborts.
4. The business is scheduled for deletion and immediately locked for everyone.
5. After 30 days, it is permanently deleted in the next nightly deletion run.

What happens the moment you confirm:

• Access is locked immediately for all staff. The wall terminal also reports “This business is locked”.
• A running subscription is cancelled immediately; periods already started are credited pro rata. The result of the cancellation is shown in the confirmation email and in the deletion log. If the subscription could not be cancelled automatically, that is stated there too — in that case please get in touch with us.
• All active owners and managers with a stored email address receive an email with the date of final deletion and a revocation link. Anyone who has not stored an address does not receive it — tell that person yourself.

Within these 30 days you can revoke the process under Settings → Data & deletion. After that, nothing can be restored.

The result after 30 days: Deleted are documents including files, shift plans and swap requests, projects, invitations, API keys, webhooks, premium rules, chat groups with all messages and all business settings. Not deleted, but anonymised and locked is the data you are required by law to retain: working-time records and absences (2 years), pay periods and pay items (6 years) and the change log (3 years). Names, email addresses, personnel numbers, login data, GPS coordinates and free texts are replaced by placeholders or removed; the time and pay values themselves remain unchanged. Once these periods have also expired, the remnants disappear automatically. You receive a confirmation email about this listing what was retained and for what reason.

The 30 days: what still works and what does not

The lock is real. Anyone who signs in during this time gets, for almost every action, the message that the business is scheduled for deletion. The only things that keep working are those that have to work:

• revoking the deletion,
• the full export (JSON) by the owner,
• the data access report of each individual person about themselves and the report by management about a person,
• the display of deletion status, deletion log and retention periods,
• the display of your own master data and the business data.

Everything else is locked: no clocking in/out, no timesheet, no shift plan, no month-end close, no CSV export. That is why the CSV export must be done before deletion — during the 30 days, only the JSON full export is still available.

Our database backups are deleted after 30 days at the latest. They serve to restore the overall system after an outage, not to rescue individual deleted businesses. So do not rely on there being “a copy somewhere”.

What happens to the staff

When deletion is ordered, all user accounts of this business immediately lose access to everything that is work. Anyone who wants to keep their own data can still request it themselves during the 30 days: Settings → Data & deletion → Download data copy. This is the right of access under Art. 15 GDPR and is available to every person — even without a management role, without going through you. They receive two files: a readable version for printing and a JSON file for further processing. More on this under What Zeitflex stores about me.

Tell your team in good time. Anyone who only finds out on the day of deletion does not have 30 days left, but none.

Switching to another provider

The full export delivers JSON — an open, structured format. Whether a particular other provider can import it, we do not know, and so we do not claim it; ask there before you switch. If you prefer CSV, take the files from the month-end close while the paid plan is still running. There is no direct handover to a particular competitor — in either direction. With us too, importing works via a file, see Importing data.

Frequently asked questions

I have cancelled the subscription — is my data gone now?

No. A cancellation only ends payment. As soon as the subscription ends at Stripe, Zeitflex moves the business to the free plan. All times, people and documents are kept. Deletion only happens if you explicitly choose “Delete business” under Settings → Data & deletion and type in the business name.

I accidentally confirmed “Delete business”. What now?

Sign in, open Settings → Data & deletion and revoke the deletion. This is possible for 30 days. The subscription, however, was already cancelled at that moment — after revoking, the business carries on in the free plan, and you choose a paid plan again under Subscription & billing if needed.

Customs comes three months after the deletion. What do I show them?

Your export. At that point Zeitflex only holds anonymised, locked remnants, which neither you nor we can access for an inspection. The obligation under § 17 MiLoG to keep the records available for two years applies to you as the employer. That is why the export is at the very top of this article — see also Customs inspection — what now?.

Can my manager delete the business or cancel the subscription?

No. Both are reserved for the Owner role: cancellation and the customer portal as well as “Delete business” and the full export. A manager can see the Subscription & billing tab, but the server rejects the cancellation itself for them. They do, however, receive the confirmation email about the ordered deletion.

Before you go

If something did not work, tell us via Support or as an idea under Feedback. We read every message, and a cancellation with a reason helps more than one without — you too, should you change your mind.

Still stuck?

Write to us via Support; which periods specifically apply is explained under Retention periods, and what happens when downgrading, under Changing your plan.