Your Data Belongs to You. We Mean It.
Every SaaS company says “your data is yours.” Most of them don’t mean it.
Try exporting all your data from most expense tools. You’ll get a CSV of transaction summaries if you’re lucky. Your categories? Gone. Your receipt attachments? Download them one by one, if at all. Your import templates and settings? Start over.
That’s not data ownership. That’s data hostage-taking with a friendly interface.
What “Your Data” Actually Means
When we say your data belongs to you, we mean all of it:
- Every transaction you’ve ever imported or entered
- Every category you’ve created and customized
- Every receipt you’ve attached
- Every import template you’ve built for your banks
- Every saved view and filter you’ve set up
- Every auto-categorize exclusion you’ve configured
All of it. Not just a summary. Not just what fits in a CSV export. Everything.
The Backup That Proves It
AllExpensesPaid has a full backup and restore system. From your profile page, click “Backup Data” and download a .aepbackup file. That file contains your complete account: transactions, categories, templates, saved views, and exclusions.
You can store this file wherever you want. Your local drive, your cloud storage, a USB stick in your desk drawer. It’s yours.
And here’s the part that matters: you can restore it. Upload the backup file, preview what’s inside (item counts, backup date, which account it came from), and choose what to import. The restore uses a merge strategy, so if you restore the same backup twice, duplicates are skipped. It’s safe and repeatable.
This isn’t a “contact support to request an export” process. It’s a button. Click it. Your data is in your hands.
No Vendor Lock-In
A lot of SaaS tools make it easy to get data in and hard to get data out. That’s intentional. If leaving is painful, you stay even when the product isn’t working for you.
We don’t want customers who stay because leaving is hard. We want customers who stay because the product is good. If AllExpensesPaid stops being the right tool for you, you should be able to take your data and go. No export fees. No “enterprise plan required for data export.” No waiting for a support ticket.
This is also why we support standard formats for reports. PDF and Excel. Every accountant, bookkeeper, and tax preparer on the planet can work with those. You’re never locked into a proprietary format that only works inside our system.
Cross-Account Safety
The backup system includes a safety feature worth mentioning: if you try to restore a backup that was created by a different account, the system warns you and requires explicit confirmation before proceeding. This prevents accidental data mixing if you manage expenses for multiple entities or if someone on your team sends you a backup file.
Small detail, but the kind of thing that prevents a mess.
Cancel Without Consequences
If you cancel your subscription, your account switches to view-only mode. You can still see all your data. You can still export it. You can still download a full backup. We don’t delete anything.
When you’re ready to come back (or if you just need to grab a report from last year), your data is there. Exactly as you left it.
Why This Matters
Data portability isn’t a feature most people think about when choosing an expense tool. You think about it when it’s too late: when you want to switch and discover your old tool only exports transaction summaries, or when the price goes up and you realize you can’t leave without losing years of categorized expense history.
We’d rather you think about it now. Your data is yours. You can prove it with one click.