Data Export and Retention

Overview

Compliance records are only worth keeping if you can also take them with you. This article covers the ways data leaves PreStartGo — from a one-off report to the full organisation export — and what happens to records over time, including at cancellation.

The full organisation export

For the complete record — an audit's document request, a migration, or simply your own archive — request a full organisation data export from the console:

1. 1
   Request the export from your organisation's settings.
2. 2

   It runs asynchronously — a full compliance history is a large artifact, so the platform builds it in the background rather than timing out a browser tab.

3. 3
   You're notified when it's ready to download, from secure storage, as a complete archive.

Report and record exports

For targeted extracts, the everyday tools are usually the better fit:

• Reports — the eleven audit-ready report types, exportable as CSV, XLSX, or PDF, on demand or scheduled.
• List exports — the console's major tables (equipment, defects, services) export as CSV for spreadsheet work.
• Per-record evidence — an individual inspection or service prints/PDFs from its own page, for the single-record request.

What retention looks like

• Compliance records don't thin out. Inspections, defects, services, bypasses and the audit trail are kept — there is no console setting that quietly shortens the compliance record, and the audit trail is append-only by construction.
• Working data has working lifetimes. A few things are deliberately temporary — an in-progress checklist draft, for instance, is kept server-side for 30 days before it's swept. Temporary states are conveniences, never compliance records.
• History survives the machine. Decommissioning equipment, retiring a GoTag, or releasing a device ends the active life, not the record — the history stays attributed and queryable.
• Generated artifacts are not the record. A report you generate is a rendered snapshot of the record, and the rendered file is kept for 90 days (a background list export, for 30). The records it was built from are untouched by that — you can regenerate. Download and file anything you need to keep beyond the window.

At cancellation

Cancelling a paid subscription does not delete anything or lock you out of your records: the organisation returns automatically to the free Plant Operator plan with its full history intact and accessible — and exportable, any time. See What Happens If a Subscription Lapses.

If an organisation genuinely needs records deleted — a wind-down, a privacy obligation — that's a deliberate, verified request through support, not a self-service button, precisely because deletion is the one thing an append-only compliance platform should never make casual.

Privacy requests

For requests about an individual's personal information — access, correction — see the privacy policy for the process and contact points. Operator identity on the public logbook is separately controllable today: your organisation chooses initials (default), full name, or nothing. See The Public Digital Logbook.

Troubleshooting