Data Lifecycle & Statutory Compliance

Data Retention, Deletion & Account Closure Policy

Version: 2026.1Statutory Base: Section 8, DPDP Act 2023 & Section 128, Companies Act 2013

1. Data Retention Lifecycle & Free Account Purge

Under the DPDP Act 2023, personal data must be erased once the purpose for which it was collected has been served, unless retention is necessary for compliance with applicable law:

  • Free Accounts (100-Day Validity & Purge): Organizations on the Free starter plan have a total account validity window of 100 days from creation, or 30 days after subscription expiry plus the 15-day warning period. Once this horizon elapses without an upgrade, the automated purge scheduler permanently deletes the organization and all associated entries.
  • Paid Accounts (Basic & Pro): Paid accounts are never auto-purged upon expiration. Expired paid accounts transition gracefully into read-only mode, safeguarding historical business records.

2. Merchant Responsibility for Statutory 8-Year Accounting Retention

Important Statutory Requirement for Indian Businesses: Under Section 128 of the Companies Act, 2013 and Section 44AA of the Income Tax Act, 1961, every Indian business entity is required to maintain its books of accounts and related vouchers for a period of not less than eight (8) financial years.

Because Cashio provides convenient self-serve export functionality (CSV and Excel XLSX) on paid tiers, store owners are responsible for exporting their historical ledgers periodically for their independent statutory archives. Cashio is not an archival custody service.

3. User-Initiated Account Closure & Permanent Erasure

An Organization Admin may request the complete deletion of their organization at any time:

  • Upon deactivation and deletion, a cascade purge removes all cashbooks, transactions, bill items, customer records, payment attempts, integration secrets, and tenant memberships.
  • Users who belong exclusively to the deleted organization are permanently purged from the database.
  • Platform-level audit logs record a sanitized tombstone event (with organization ID 0) for accountability without retaining merchant data.