Sell your QuickBooks or Xero records to AI

Invoices, bills, reconciliations and the journal behind them show how money moved through a company and why. Five of the companies we list take finance and accounting records, and Grepped names QuickBooks. Telegraph lists a $350,000 deal with a 60-person accounting firm for five years of workpapers, reconciliations and tax files, which is a firm licensing its own work product.

You keep these records anyway, so license a copy

The IRS says to keep records for 3 years in most cases, 6 years if you under-reported income by more than a quarter, 7 years for a bad debt or worthless securities claim, and employment tax records for at least 4 years. A closing company keeps its books long after it cancels the software. A license is a copy of what you already have to keep.

QuickBooks Online: export reports and lists as one zip

From Settings, choose Export data to export your reports and lists as Excel files in one zip, switching each report or list on or off. Non-posting transactions such as estimates and purchase orders export separately from their transaction lists, and attachments download as their own zip from Settings under Lists.

After you cancel a single subscription you have read-only access to your data for one year, and after that you must resubscribe to reach it. If you hold several subscriptions, keeping one under the same login keeps read-only access indefinitely.

Xero: export first, then give a month’s notice

Xero cancels a paid subscription on one month’s notice from inside your account. After the cancellation you can’t open that organization, so Xero recommends exporting your data first. It archives the data rather than deleting it, and says you can get access again for up to seven years unless you ask for deletion.

Your customers, staff and bank are in every line

• Bank and card details, tax IDs and payroll. Take them out of any sample.
• Customer and supplier names are personal data when the counterparty is a sole trader. Ask each company how it removes them.
• Your accountant’s workpapers may be the firm’s, not yours. Check the engagement letter.

The rights checklist covers the rest.