2026-07-06

Leaving any time-tracking tool: the exit test

Every time-tracking tool is easy to join. The difference shows up when you leave. Ask these five questions before you sign up, while the answers still cost the vendor nothing.

1. Can I export everything, at any time?

Not a summary report. Every time entry with its project, task, person, date, minutes and notes, plus the clients, projects, tasks, people and rates that give those entries meaning. If the answer involves a support ticket or a higher plan, that is a no.

2. What happens to export after I cancel?

Some tools close the door the day the subscription ends. Ask for a number of days. Ask whether it is written down anywhere you could point to later.

3. Is there an API, and does it need a plan I would not otherwise buy?

An API is how your bookkeeper’s spreadsheet, or your next tool, reads your history without a human clicking through screens. Read-only is enough. Gated behind an enterprise tier is not.

4. Do the numbers survive the trip?

Hours are easy. Money is where migrations go wrong: rates that changed mid-year, overrides on single entries, corrections against locked weeks. Ask how you would check that a total in the new tool matches the old one.

5. Who owns the vendor, and what happens to pricing after that changes?

Ownership changes are when pricing models change. You cannot predict one, but you can make sure it is cheap to leave if it happens.

Our answers

• Full-fidelity CSV export of every entry and every entity, at all times, on every plan.
• 90 days of export access after you cancel, written down as an exit guarantee.
• A read-only API on every plan.
• An importer that ends with a report comparing every total against the source, to the cent.

We wrote the guarantee first and the product second. It is the complaint that made the product exist.