Privacy and data retention #
This page describes what the books API keeps about you and the people in your books, and what happens to it when your account is deleted.
What we hold #
- Your account. Your identity (name, email, password) is held by the Microbooks account service. The books API holds only your account id, your subscription, the billing email and a summary of your card (brand, last four digits, expiry). The card itself is held by our payment processor.
- Your books. The entities, accounts, categories, transactions and line items you record. These often name your clients, suppliers and staff. For that data you are the controller and Microbooks is the processor.
When your account is deleted #
To delete your account, email privacy@microbooks.io. The steps below follow.
- Immediately:
- Your account can no longer sign in, even with tokens that have not expired.
- Your subscription is cancelled, so no further invoices, charges or reminders follow, and your stored card is removed from the payment processor.
- Other users you shared your books with lose access to them.
- For 6 months: your data is kept unchanged, so that a deletion made in error can still be reversed. Contact us within this period if that applies.
- After 6 months: personal data is deleted or anonymised:
- Entity, account and category names are replaced. For example, an account named after a client becomes
Receivable 1201. - Transaction narrations and references, line item narrations and opening-balance references are removed.
- Your billing email, card summary, reminders and cached responses are deleted.
- Entity, account and category names are replaced. For example, an account named after a client becomes
The financial records themselves (amounts, dates, account codes and the ledger) are kept, as tax law requires, but they no longer identify anyone. The ledger’s integrity hashes do not cover any of the anonymised fields, so the books still verify.
Your rights #
You can ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, or for it to be erased without waiting out the retention period. Email privacy@microbooks.io. Every request is recorded, together with how it was handled.
Erasing your account early also anonymises the books you own. Tell us if those books should be kept intact, for example for a business partner, before you ask.