There’s a quiet test every piece of software you rely on should pass: can you leave? Not “will you,” but can you — cleanly, completely, whenever you decide to, without asking anyone’s permission or waiting on a support queue.
For the tool that holds your invoices, your client list, your income history and your tax records, that test matters more than almost any feature. So we want to be plain about where Billable stands: your data is yours, and you can take all of it out at any time, as plain spreadsheet files.
You can export all your data from Billable yourself, at any time, as plain CSV files. Go to Settings, then Export, and download one file per record type — clients, projects, contractors, time, invoices, quotes, their line items and a documents manifest. There’s no form, no support ticket and no waiting, so you can back up or leave whenever you choose.
How to export your data from Billable
Open Settings from the secondary navbar, then Export.
That’s it. There’s no form to fill in, no reason to give, and no “contact us to request your data.” Each type of record has its own Export button — click it and Billable hands you a CSV of that data on the spot.
If you run more than one business in Billable, export lives inside each business’s settings, so you always know exactly which set of records you’re taking with you.
What “all your data” actually means
We mean it literally. Every type of record you’ve built up gets its own file, so nothing is buried in a summary:
- Clients — every client with its address and status
- Contacts — each client’s contact people, one row per contact
- Projects — with their client, billing terms and dates
- Contractors — the people you pay and their default pay terms
- Contractor assignments — which contractor is on which project, and their pay terms
- Contractor payments — money paid or due to contractors
- Time — completed time entries with their project and hours
- Invoices — with their client, totals and settlement
- Invoice line items — the individual lines on every invoice
- Quotes — with their client and status
- Quote line items — the individual lines on every quote
- Documents — a manifest of your attached files, with temporary download links
Everything comes out as CSV — one file per type, faithful to what’s in the app — so you can open it in any spreadsheet, keep it as a backup, or hand it straight to an accountant. No proprietary blob that only Billable can read. The point of an export you can’t use anywhere else is nothing.
One honest caveat on Documents: that file is a manifest of your attachments rather than the files themselves, and the download links in it are temporary — they expire, and only work while the underlying file still exists. So if you’re archiving your attached files, pull the actual files down while the links are fresh.
Why we build it this way
Plenty of tools treat your data as the thing that keeps you paying. The harder it is to leave, the longer you stay — so export gets buried, throttled, or turned into a “premium” feature you have to email support to unlock.
We think that’s backwards. If the only reason you’re still here is that leaving is a nightmare, that’s not loyalty, it’s a hostage situation. We’d rather earn the next month than trap you into it.
So export-it-all-yourself isn’t a grudging compliance checkbox for us. It’s a standing promise: you can walk out the door with everything, at any moment, and Billable’s job is to be good enough that you don’t want to.
There’s a practical upside too. Your records shouldn’t only exist inside one company’s servers. Pull an export before tax season and hand it straight to your CA. Keep a periodic copy in your own backups. Reconcile against your bank in a spreadsheet, the way basic bookkeeping asks you to. It’s your business’s financial history — you should be able to hold it in your own hands.
Frequently asked questions
What is a CSV file?
A CSV (comma-separated values) file is a plain-text spreadsheet: each line is a row and commas separate the columns. Excel, Google Sheets, Numbers and LibreOffice all open it, as does most accounting and invoicing software that offers an import. Because it’s plain text, a CSV doesn’t depend on any one company’s software to stay readable, which is what makes it a sensible format for backups.
How often should a freelancer back up their invoicing data?
Monthly is a sensible rhythm for most freelancers, plus once before tax season and before any big change such as switching tools. A regular copy kept in your own storage means your invoices and client records don’t exist only on one provider’s servers. Pairing the backup with a monthly money review makes it a habit rather than a chore.
Can I export my timesheets from Billable on their own?
Yes. Any timesheet can be exported to CSV in a click from time tracking, which is handy when a client wants to see the hours behind an invoice. That per-timesheet export is separate from the full data export, so you can hand over one project’s hours without sending everything else in your account along with it.
Can I delete my Billable account and data?
Yes. You can delete your account and data whenever you like, and Billable doesn’t sell your data. If you’re leaving for good, the sensible order is to export everything first, check the files open properly and download any attachments you want to keep, then delete — once the data is gone, there’s nothing left to export.
A note on trust
Openness isn’t only about the exit. It’s the same reason we show amounts in the currency they were billed in rather than a tidier converted figure, and the same reason our pricing has no seats, no tiers and no per-user fees to decode. We’d rather you always know exactly what you’re looking at and exactly where you stand.
Export is the clearest version of that. You don’t have to take our word for the promise — you can go to Settings on the secondary navbar, open Export right now, pull down every file, and see for yourself that it’s all there.
The door’s unlocked. That’s rather the point.