Canceling a subscription renewal, closing one person’s account, and permanently deleting an organization’s information are separate actions with different effects. This article explains what happens after a subscription ends, how long information is retained, and how authorized people request permanent deletion.

Routine record actions such as deactivating an employee, making a job code unavailable, or approving an Eliminate action for a position preserve business history. They do not permanently delete the organization or its information.

Before you begin

Activity Permission and scope required
Review retention policy Active organization membership
Request permanent organization deletion or preservation assistance An authorized organization contact; organization administrators cannot permanently delete an organization themselves
Review activity history retention The related record’s viewing permission; downloads also require Export reports
Access setup See Roles and permissions.

When a subscription ends

Canceling a paid subscription stops its next renewal and takes effect at the end of the current paid billing period. It does not itself request data deletion. When paid access actually ends or a subscription expires, your organization enters a 90-day grace period. During this period:

  • Organization information such as positions, employees, departments, and approval history is preserved.
  • Access to FTE Tree is restricted until the subscription is renewed.
  • You can resubscribe at any time during the grace period to restore full access with all data intact.

If no action is taken within the 90-day grace period, your organization becomes eligible for permanent deletion. Eligibility does not mean deletion has started. FTE Tree verifies the requester’s authority and completes the required review before deletion begins.

Permanent organization deletion

After the grace period and authority checks, FTE Tree permanently removes the organization’s information and associated billing records. This includes positions, employees, departments, job codes, approval requests, reports, messages, uploaded files, organization activity history, and stored human resources system and company sign-in credentials.

After deletion, FTE Tree keeps only limited confirmation that the request was authorized and completed. This confirmation is not a usable copy of the organization’s workforce information.

Permanent deletion cannot be undone once it begins.

Backups

Deleted information may remain temporarily in protected disaster-recovery backups until those backups expire under the applicable retention schedule. Backups cannot be used to restore ordinary access to a deleted organization.

Activity and security record retention

Different types of activity and security information have different retention periods:

  • Activity history records, such as position changes, approval actions, user updates, and other business-history entries, are retained for the lifetime of your organization’s account. These records appear in activity history pages and are available for reporting when your permissions allow it.

  • Security and account activity records such as sign-ins and access-related events are retained for 730 days.

  • Notification delivery records such as email delivery outcomes are retained for 90 days.

Organization activity records are removed with the organization when permanent deletion completes. Account and security records that are separate from the organization continue under their stated retention periods.

Report data retention

Generated report results and attached files are kept for your organization’s report-retention period. The standard period is 90 days, and organization administrators cannot change it in organization settings. When a report expires, its preview and download are no longer available, and you can run the report again to create a current result. The generated result files are removed, while report history continues to show the request and expiration.

Contact Support if a contractual, regulatory, or legal requirement may require a different retention period.

Reports do not expire while they are pending or running. An expired report remains unavailable after its generated result files have been removed.

Organization summaries remain with your organization’s data until someone with access changes them or the account is deleted.

Preservation requests

If your legal counsel, a regulator, a court, or an incident investigator instructs you to preserve information, contact FTE Tree before requesting deletion or before an existing deletion begins. FTE Tree handles preservation requests case by case with the appropriate authority and scope. There is no organization setting for a legal preservation request.

Requesting deletion

To request permanent deletion, contact us. Include the organization name and enough information for FTE Tree to verify your authority. Do not include workforce data, passwords, payment details, or private files. You may submit the request during the grace period, but deletion cannot complete before the applicable retention and final cooling periods end.

Summary

Stage Timeframe What happens
Subscription active Ongoing Full access, all data preserved
Grace period 90 days after subscription ends Data preserved, access restricted, resubscription restores access
Deletion eligible After the grace period FTE Tree verifies authority and completes the required review
Permanent deletion After retention and authority checks Organization information and associated billing records are permanently removed
Backup expiration According to the applicable retention schedule Deleted data ages out of encrypted disaster-recovery copies