Getting your data out, and deleting it

Three different things, all in one place because they are the same question from different directions.

Downloading everything you hold

1. Go to Settings → Settings.
2. Scroll to Your data and press Download all my records.

The same Your data panel, with the same button, is also on the **Your account** screen (press your name at the top right; on a phone, it is at the top of the menu). That is where to find it on a free account, which has no Settings screen.

You get one zip file of spreadsheet files: clients, bookings, invoices and their lines, payments, contracts, quotes, galleries and their photo lists, print orders and what was in them, enquiries, questionnaire answers and expenses, plus your studio's own details.

They open in Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets without installing anything, and your accountant can read them.

The photographs themselves are not in this download, because they are large. To keep a copy of your website, its pages and its photographs, see backups.

Why this is a button rather than a support ticket: your client list, bookings and invoices are yours. A product that makes them hard to take elsewhere is relying on the wrong thing to keep you.

Passwords, private links, payment-account details and signature images are left out. They are keys, not records, and a spreadsheet of them sitting in a downloads folder would be a risk rather than a copy of your business.

The Export link beside Finances on your Overview downloads the same file.

A client who asks what you hold

1. Open Clients → Clients and choose the client.
2. Under Their data, press Download everything about them.

You get one client's own file, ready to send them: their details, bookings, invoices, contracts, galleries, enquiries and what they answered in your questionnaires.

Under Australian privacy law a person can ask what personal information you hold about them. This is the answer, and it takes a minute rather than an afternoon.

A client who asks to be removed

1. Open Clients → Clients and choose the client.
2. Under Their data, press Erase their details and confirm.

This cannot be undone. Their name, email, phone, notes and how they found you are wiped. Their enquiry text, questionnaire answers, favourites and text messages are cleared. The client is archived, so they leave every list and every automation.

Two things are deliberately kept, and you are told which and how many:

• Invoices, because tax records require them.
• Signed contracts, because they are evidence of an agreement you both made.

They are kept without the client's details attached. Privacy law asks you to destroy personal information once it is no longer needed, and a record you are legally required to keep is still needed.

Every erasure is logged: what was erased, when, and by whom.

If you close your studio

To cancel a paid plan, sign in to your Meridian account, open Your sites and press Billing & invoices under your site; cancelling is done there. From inside your studio, your name at the top right, then **Billing → Change plan, update card or cancel, takes you to the same Your sites** page. A free account has no payment to cancel: to have it closed and removed, raise a ticket. In the Meridian Photographers app you can also ask for this yourself: Menu → Account information → Delete my account.

When a Studio subscription ends, your work is kept for at least ninety days, so an accidental lapse or a change of mind costs nothing. Your clients' galleries keep working in that time. Download your records in that window.

After that, it can be deleted for good: the records, the photographs and the files.

What we hold about you

Separately from your own clients' data, our privacy notice covers what Meridian holds about you as a customer: privacy.