What happens to your data when you cancel QuickBooks Online

The short answer

When you cancel a paid QuickBooks Online subscription, Intuit says you keep read-only access for one year from the cancellation date. During that year you can sign in, look at your transactions and reports, and export them to Excel. You can't enter anything new or change what is there. After the year, the company is no longer available to you.

There is no company file to download, as there was with QuickBooks Desktop. What you keep is whatever you export: reports and lists as Excel files, attachments as a .zip, and PDFs of anything you print. So the real question is not what Intuit does with your data, but what you take with you, and when.

The timelines, case by case

Intuit's help article "What happens to my data after canceling my QuickBooks subscription?" sets out a few different cases. The US version was updated in August 2026; the Canadian version says the same in a table, with one inconsistency noted below.

Your situation	What Intuit says happens
You cancel a paid subscription	Read-only access for one year from the cancellation date. You can export to Excel during that year.
You cancel during a free trial, or the trial ends	The US article says your data is available for 90 days, and you must export within those 90 days. The Canadian article's table says one year, but its text says 90 days, so plan on 90.
Your card is declined	14 days to update your billing, with full access. After that the account is suspended. The US article says you must re-subscribe to get at your data; the Canadian table gives one year of read-only access after the 14 days.
You change your mind	The Canadian article says that if you resubscribe within 12 months of cancelling a paid subscription, your earlier data comes back. After 12 months you can use the same login, but the old data is gone.

Two things follow from this. First, the year starts on the day you cancel, not the day your last paid month ends, so don't cancel early "to get it done" if you haven't exported yet. Second, a declined card is the worst way to leave: in the US you may find yourself locked out rather than read-only. If you are leaving, cancel on purpose, after you export.

What read-only really means

Read-only lets you look and export. It doesn't let you fix anything. That matters more than it sounds:

No corrections. If your accountant finds a miscoded expense or a missing invoice during year-end, you can't fix it in QuickBooks Online. It has to be fixed in whatever you moved to.
The audit log may not be there. Intuit's audit log article lists an active QuickBooks Online subscription and admin access as requirements, and says events are kept for two years. If you need a record of who changed what, look at it and save what matters before you cancel.
Payroll forms. Intuit's community team has said you keep access to payroll data for a year after cancelling, but that filed forms in the archive need a subscription to retrieve. Download every filed 941, 940, W-2 and state form (or PD7A remittance records, T4s and ROEs in Canada) while you can still use the screens normally.
Connected apps stop. Payment apps, shop connections and bank feeds that wrote into QuickBooks Online have nowhere to write. Disconnect or repoint them before you cancel, so payments don't go missing between systems.

What to save before you cancel

Our step-by-step export guide has the exact reports. In short, keep two kinds of copy:

The working set, for the software you are moving to: chart of accounts, customers, vendors, products and services, a trial balance as of your switch date, A/R and A/P aging detail as of that date, and, if you want your history, the Journal report.
The archive, for an audit or a question in three years' time: the general ledger for every year you used QuickBooks Online, year-end balance sheets and profit and loss statements, sales tax and payroll filings, and your attachments (receipts and bills) as a .zip.

Excel files are fine for the archive. They open without any accounting software, which is the point. Put them in a folder named for the company and the year range, and back that folder up somewhere other than your PC.

How long you must keep records

The tax authorities don't care which software you used; they care that you can produce the records. In the US, the IRS says to keep most records for 3 years from filing, longer in some cases, and employment tax records for at least 4 years after the tax was due or paid. In Canada, the CRA says to keep records for six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to.

QuickBooks Online's one year of read-only access is much shorter than either. Whatever you export is what you'll be showing an auditor, so export more than you think you need.

The order to do it in

Pick a switch date. The start of a month works; the start of your fiscal year is best, because this year's profit and loss then lives in one program.
Close the last period in QuickBooks Online. Enter everything up to the switch date and reconcile the bank and card accounts to the last statement before it.
Export the working set and the archive while you still have full access.
Set up the new books and check them against the exports: trial balance, aging, bank balances. Our guide to proving the books match covers this.
Run both for one period if you can afford a month's overlap. It is the cheapest insurance there is.
Cancel payroll first, then the subscription, after the last pay run and remittance in QuickBooks Online have gone through.

AcboBooks is one place to move to: a Windows desktop program, bought once for $399.99, with the company file encrypted on your own PC. It reads QuickBooks Online's Excel exports directly, either lists and open balances or full history, and compares every account with your QuickBooks Online trial balance before and after the import. It doesn't have a phone app or live bank connections, so it isn't for everyone; the move page lists what comes across and what doesn't.

QuickBooks® is a registered trademark of Intuit Inc. AcboBooks is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Intuit.

Frequently asked questions

Can I still log in to QuickBooks Online after I cancel?

Yes. Intuit says a cancelled paid subscription keeps read-only access for one year from the cancellation date. You can view and export, but not enter or change anything.

What if I only had a free trial?

Intuit's US help article says trial data is available for 90 days after you cancel or the trial ends, and that you must export within those 90 days. Treat 90 days as your deadline in Canada too.

Can I get my data back after the year is up?

Intuit's Canadian article says that if you resubscribe within 12 months of cancelling a paid subscription you get your earlier data back. After 12 months you can sign in with the same login, but the earlier data is no longer available.

Does read-only include payroll and the audit log?

Don't count on it. Intuit lists an active subscription as a requirement for the audit log, and Intuit's community team has said filed payroll forms need a subscription to retrieve. Download them before you cancel.

This article is general information, not tax, legal or accounting advice. Rules and dates change; check the official source or ask your accountant before acting.