By
Adam Simmons
· Last checked
August 2026
Export first, cancel last. Everything else is detail.
Access to your data usually ends when the subscription does, and often on the same day rather than at some grace period you are imagining. Whatever you need out — records, message histories, documents, client contact details, a list of who owes what — get it out while the account is fully live and paid.
The sequence that works is:
Export everything, while paid.
Open and check the exports actually contain what you think.
Get the new thing working alongside the old one.
Move your phone number, if the number lives with the vendor you are leaving.
Only then cancel, in writing, and confirm the cancellation.
The mistake that costs people is compressing steps 4 and 5. A number cannot usually be transferred out of a closed account. Practitioners have cancelled a service they were done with and then discovered the number went with it — one was left holding business cards printed with a number she no longer controlled.
And your obligations do not leave with the vendor. Whatever your College requires you to retain, you still retain it after the account is gone, which means the export is not optional housekeeping. It is the record.
Export first, cancel last. Everything else is detail.
Access to your data usually ends when the subscription does, and often on the same day rather than at some grace period you are imagining. Whatever you need out — records, message histories, documents, client contact details, a list of who owes what — get it out while the account is fully live and paid.
The sequence that works is:
Export everything, while paid.
Open and check the exports actually contain what you think.
Get the new thing working alongside the old one.
Move your phone number, if the number lives with the vendor you are leaving.
Only then cancel, in writing, and confirm the cancellation.
The mistake that costs people is compressing steps 4 and 5. A number cannot usually be transferred out of a closed account. Practitioners have cancelled a service they were done with and then discovered the number went with it — one was left holding business cards printed with a number she no longer controlled.
And your obligations do not leave with the vendor. Whatever your College requires you to retain, you still retain it after the account is gone, which means the export is not optional housekeeping. It is the record.
What has to come out before you cancel
Work this as a list. Tick each one only after you have opened the file.
Clinical notes, in a form you can actually read without the software
Message and communication histories, if any client communication happened inside the product
Voicemails or call records, if those form part of what you keep
Uploaded documents — consents, intake forms, correspondence, assessments
Client contact details, including the phone numbers you will need to notify
Financial records — invoices, receipts, outstanding balances, anything your accountant will ask for
Anything a client has signed
The trap is the export that technically succeeds. A file that opens as an unreadable dump, a bundle missing every attachment, notes exported without dates, a message history exported as a single column — these all count as "exported" from the vendor's side and are useless from yours. Open them. Read a few. Check that a note from two years ago is legible and attributable.
What you may not be able to get out
Some things are commonly hard or impossible to retrieve, and it is better to learn that now than during a notice period:
Message threads, where the product treats them as ephemeral
Voicemail audio, as opposed to transcripts
Anything held on the client's side of a portal
Data from any integration that was never really yours to begin with
If something on that list matters to you, ask support directly, in writing, and keep the answer. Practitioners describe support at some of these companies as slow and evasive under normal conditions; it does not improve once you have said you are leaving.
Does the old vendor still hold my client data afterwards?
Usually yes, for some period, and you should know what that period is rather than assume.
The questions worth asking in writing before you cancel: how long do you retain my data after the account closes, can I request deletion, will you confirm deletion in writing, and where is it stored.
Federal privacy rules set a direction rather than a date. An organization is told to keep personal information "only as long as it is needed to serve those purposes", to "institute maximum and minimum retention periods", and to "dispose of personal information that does not have a specific purpose or no longer fulfills its intended purpose" (Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada). There is no published number in that and no deletion-on-demand right you can point at. What actually governs is the provider's own policy and the contract you signed, which is why the answer is worth having in writing while you are still a paying customer.
Your own duty binds you either way, and it is measured in years. Social workers and social service workers keep each record "for at least ten years from the date of the last entry or, if the client was less than eighteen years of age at the date of the last entry, at least ten years from the day the client became or would have become eighteen" (OCSWSSW 4.2.2). Psychologists and behaviour analysts keep individual client records "for a minimum of 10 years after the service recipient reaches the age of 18 or after the last professional contact, whichever comes later" (CPBAO 9.4). Psychotherapists are expected to keep them ten years too, though that figure sits in commentary rather than in the numbered standard and is scoped to "where the RP is the custodian of the clinical record" (CRPO 5.1).
Check your own, and check it in the current edition. Whatever the number is, the export you are about to make has to stay readable for that long.
Should I actually leave?
Worth asking honestly, because the reason most practitioners stay on software they dislike is not that they think the alternative is worse. It is that switching costs time, attention and confidence they do not currently have spare. That is a real cost, not a failure of nerve.
Two questions cut through it.
Is the thing you dislike a papercut or a structural problem? A clunky interface is a papercut. Missed messages, a line that does not ring, records you cannot get at, support that does not answer — those are structural, and they get worse with volume rather than better with familiarity.
Can you leave later if you stay now? If the answer is "not easily", the cost of staying compounds. Every month you stay adds records, history and printed material to the pile that has to move.
If it is a papercut and the exit is clean, stay. If it is structural, the switch gets more expensive every month you delay it.
Make the switch smaller than it looks
The whole difficulty is holding two systems in your head at once, so shorten that period rather than trying to be clever.
Run the new thing in parallel for a short, dated window — set the end date when you start. Move new clients onto it immediately and existing ones in a single batch. Don't attempt to recreate every workflow on day one; get the essential path working, then add.
And do the exports before any of this, not after, so that nothing you are doing in the new system depends on the old one still being available.
The short version
Export everything while the account is paid and open it to check. Move the phone number before you close the account, not after. Cancel in writing and get the cancellation confirmed. Keep the exports wherever the rest of your records live, under the same retention rules. And be honest about whether the thing you dislike is a papercut or a wall — only one of those is worth the week.
About Rivet
Rivet is a Canadian practice line built for therapists — a separate number for calls, texts and voicemail, with video sessions and clinical tools in the same place. Your data stays in Canada, and transcription runs on Rivet's own hardware rather than a third-party AI service.
One plan, $65 CAD a month, everything included. Fourteen-day trial, no card.