Implications of using Software as a Service and data retention

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OldGeek

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#280538 21-Dec-2020 21:06

Mods: Please place this in the appropriate forum if required.

I am the Treasurer of an Incorporated Society that is voluntarily being wound up. The club uses Xero (in its simplest and least-expensive form) to produce annual accounts reports to members and the Registrar of Incorporated Societies.

The problem this highlights that that the clubs financial records and the means of accessing them are tied to a monthly subscription. When the club winds up, the process of data retention and access is eliminated when the Xero subscription ends. The Xero answer is that it is the responsibility of the club to export the data (outside Xero) to meet any statuary data retention requirements, prior to the end of the subscription period. I am yet to go into this fully, but clearly the data is of little use when the user can no longer use the software required to report on the exported data.

In the case of an Incorporated Society this is probably not a big issue as annual reports to the Registrar are not normally scrutinised to any great extent, but for for-profit organisations (particularly with a public share register) this is far more significant. How do organisations deal with this issue? Or is it ignored?

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SirHumphreyAppleby

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#2625105 21-Dec-2020 21:13

Ctrl+P.

I.e. Keep a printed copy.

I would assume Xero will allow exports in a common format such as CVS, in which case the raw data would still be available and could, should someone wish to, be used to verify the calculations in the printed documents.

ANglEAUT

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#2625127 21-Dec-2020 22:19

I could not find a simple "export my complete data" button similar to Google & Facebook.

I did find this link though: https://central.xero.com/s/article/Export-data-out-of-Xero

Seems like pretty much everything can be exported as individual CSV files, some sections support TXT & PDF. I'm ignoring options to import into another application.

This is their introductory paragraph (emphasis mine): There isn’t a one-step feature to copy all of an organisation's data. However, you can export data from individual areas of Xero and reports from our reports screen. You might want to do this if you plan to cancel your Xero subscription.

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hio77

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#2625129 21-Dec-2020 22:26

My approach to any pure cloud based system is always to have exports locally and then backed up from there.

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Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

CYaBro

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#2625132 21-Dec-2020 22:42

What about signing up for a free trial of something like this?
https://www.control-c.com/

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

OldGeek

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#2625276 22-Dec-2020 09:01

Thanks for the responses. @CYaBro - that is a good solution for those wanting their Xero data backed up independently on an ongoing basis, but a subscription is required.

The notion of data exports etc. does allow data access but my point is that the user does not have the Xero tools required to analyse any further, edit transactions coded to the wrong account or create error-correction journal entries. All this can be done with a continuing Xero subscription, but not for an entity that has been wound up or liquidated all this must be done before the subscription is terminated.

The ideal solution would be a one-off Xero fee that allows continued access to Xero on a 'read-only' basis for a fixed period.

Note that for an Incorporated Society there is a requirement to file annual accounts to the Registrar. Evidence must be included that club members have approved the accuracy of each report (via a copy of the AGM minutes signed by officeholders) so there can be no future comeback from club members about accuracy.

Entities using SAAS services need to plan for such an eventuality as this.

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BlinkyBill

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#2625295 22-Dec-2020 09:43

OldGeek:

...

Entities using SAAS services need to plan for such an eventuality as this.

People and organisations using SAAS need to plan for an eventuality like this.

I make a living managing databases, on-premise and in the cloud. It is uncommon that people and organisations consider software obsolescence and/or service cessation, the whole-of-life and total-cost-of-ownership considerations necessarily include end-of-life.

It is unrealistic to expect a dataset to persist over a long term, and when entering a service you should plan for exiting the service at the outset.

But it’s unusual that people and organisations do so, especially, I guess, at the consumer end of the scale.

You could ask Xero directly for advice and the cost of their tech’s extracting your data for you. That would be receptive I think to a suggestion that they offer a service commercially, albeit it probably won’t come in time for your requirements.

Otherwise you could pay someone to do the multi-source extract and formulate it into a suitable dataset, but this would be pricey as well.

You shouldn’t be doing transactions to archived datasets, by the way, that defeats the point of an archive.

OldGeek

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#2626377 24-Dec-2020 12:35

I have had a dialogue with Xero support over this. The situation is quite different to what I understood to be the case. When a subscription is cancelled the data is retained for a period dependent on the country of domicile - in NZ, the period of the statute of limitations (7 years?). If a subscription is reactivated during this period, all the data will still be there and the appropriate Xero functionality intact.

I discovered this by raising a new feature request with support, asking that read-only access be made available for a fee after a subscription is cancelled. Support then tagged me onto an existing near-identical feature request made through the Xero Community (users forum). It was through reading through this suggestion and the Xero response to it that I got the information above.

When I searched the Xero help database on subscription cancellation there was nothing I could find about the fact that data is retained after a subscription is terminated. This is a significant omission.

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ANglEAUT

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#2626673 25-Dec-2020 11:21

OldGeek:

I have had a dialogue with Xero support over this. The situation is quite different to what I understood to be the case. When a subscription is cancelled the data is retained for a period dependent on the country of domicile - in NZ, the period of the statute of limitations (7 years?). If a subscription is reactivated during this period, all the data will still be there and the appropriate Xero functionality intact.

I discovered this by raising a new feature request with support, asking that read-only access be made available for a fee after a subscription is cancelled. Support then tagged me onto an existing near-identical feature request made through the Xero Community (users forum). It was through reading through this suggestion and the Xero response to it that I got the information above.

When I searched the Xero help database on subscription cancellation there was nothing I could find about the fact that data is retained after a subscription is terminated. This is a significant omission.

Emphasis mine.

Make sure you get it in writing from Xero that your records will be available & keep with all other wind down paperwork.
Submit another feature request to put this info into the help article 😁

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BlinkyBill

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#2626723 25-Dec-2020 17:33

It took me one minute to note the terms of termination, including data retention, in the legal terms and conditions, which a user agrees they have read and understood on signing up.

OldGeek

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#2626761 25-Dec-2020 21:43

BlinkyBill:

It took me one minute to note the terms of termination, including data retention, in the legal terms and conditions, which a user agrees they have read and understood on signing up.

I am a relative novice user of Xero. I did find the Xero Terms and Conditions, but not from within the dashboard pages or help but from Xero.co.nz with the 'Legal' link in the page footer. The dashboard is my work area and there is no such page footer there.

The organisation was signed up to Xero in 2012 so I was not involved then.

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