Retention outlives the trade

The retention clock is set by tax deadlines and dispute windows, and neither of them cares that you have stopped. Whatever period applies where you live keeps running after your last job, and the records that would answer a question are the ones that vanish first when an account closes.

So the export happens before the closure, not after it.

Export before you close, not after

Deactivated accounts are frequently readable for a while and then not readable at all, and nobody warns you at the transition. Some platforms delete payout history on closure by design, because holding financial records about a former user is its own liability for them.

Pull four things while you still have a login.

Payout history, as a file rather than a screenshot, covering the whole account life. Order or job history, with dates and amounts. Message threads for anything unresolved, or anything that was ever contentious. Your reviews and rating summary, which is the only surviving evidence of a working record if you ever return.

The last one matters more than people expect if you come back. What a long break actually costs is mostly ranking rather than reputation, and reputation is the part you can carry back with you if you kept a copy. The platform's own account pages are where these exports live; Rate Cock's judges page is the current description of what a judge account holds and therefore what there is to take.

How long, and set by what

Three clocks run at once and the longest one wins.

The tax clock: the period your authority can open an enquiry, which in most countries is measured in years rather than months and is longer where an error was serious. In the UK, GOV.UK sets it at least five years after the 31 January submission deadline; the IRS's general rule is three years, or six if unreported income exceeds 25% of the gross income on your return. The dispute clock: card chargeback windows and platform dispute windows, both usually months rather than years, both counted from the transaction and not from your last day. The practical clock: how long before a former buyer might reasonably contact you about work you did.

The longer treatment of retention periods works through which of these binds in which situation. The check-your-country caveat applies to all of it, because the tax clock is the long one and it is defined locally.

Storing it without creating a new problem

Records you keep are records you are now responsible for, and a folder of client material sitting on an old laptop is a worse outcome than not keeping it.

Keep the financial and job records, which are small, dated and boring. Delete the client material itself, which is the part with any sensitivity in it, unless something specific requires you to hold it. What you hold about buyers is the piece on that distinction, and stopping is the natural moment to act on it rather than defer it again.

One encrypted archive, one offline copy, a note of what is in it and when it can be deleted. That is the whole system, and a system that takes an afternoon at the end is a system that survives.

The exception worth naming is anything that was ever disputed or reported, which you keep until every window on it has closed, regardless of how tidy you are being with the rest.

The habit of keeping documentation is not unique to this trade; anyone publishing a number that somebody else relies on ends up documenting how it was produced, which is why the measurement side keeps such careful method notes. The retention question also runs in the other direction - what services hold about you after you leave is a live subject on the tools side, and the account of storage and deletion practice there is the clearest general summary. Buyers, meanwhile, keep almost nothing: the buyer-side account of how commissions are handled assumes the transaction ends when the work arrives, which is exactly why the surviving copy has to be yours.